


origin swap

by xiilnek



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-06-17 17:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15466074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiilnek/pseuds/xiilnek
Summary: I wanted a taste of what Connor and Hank would be like with the same basic personalities, but with the other's background. So here that is:Lieutenant Anderson, the human with a talent for shutting down the human parts of himself, and RK800, the prototype whose specialty is emotion. Together, they fight crime. Or something. If they can get their shit together long enough.





	1. 1 - they meet

If it didn’t have that band on its sleeve or ANDROID printed across the back of that baggy coat, you wouldn’t even know what it was. That gray hair is so shaggy and unkempt that Connor almost can't see the LED under it. It looks around while it walks up the line of desks, shoving its hands in its pockets and spinning around to get a full view of the room. The time’s late enough that most of the other detectives have gone home; it doesn’t take too many guesses to figure out just who the android might be here to see.

“Hey,” it says, nodding at him and holding its hand out. “I’m the android sent by Cyberlife.” It seems to consider something, then one side of its lips turns up, friendly and casual. “You can call me Hank.”

Connor looks down toward the model number on its jacket. “RK800,” he says in the flat, featureless voice that, in the past three years, he’s become known for. “Why were you sent to me?”

The RK800 lowers its hand. It even takes a moment before it replies to look surprised at Connor’s response. Curious; that level of personality mimicry’s a programming quirk you rarely see in most android models.

“Uh. I was sent to tag along on a potential deviancy case that just came in. I kind of thought you’d be at home at this hour but uh, your neighbor told me you’d probably be here. You ready for one more stop before you knock off for the night?”

“Hm. I just have to wrap this report up.” Connor goes back to work, ignoring the way the android wanders around while he does it. It doesn’t linger near Connor’s desk long; there’s nothing there to see. If it wasn’t for the sign showing his name and rank, his own desk would be identical to the empty one in front of it.

“Heyyyyyy,” Connor hears a few minutes later and grimaces a little, minutely. Sometimes working late means he gets an office free, for a few hours, from Reed. Other times, he’s not so lucky.

Reed saunters up to the RK800, walking in a full circle around it. It raises its eyebrow at him, looking curious and just a touch unimpressed. Definitely programmed differently from the typical DPD androids.

“Would you look at that,” Reed says, and Connor looks back to his screen, not needing to look at Reed to visualize the smug grin oozing over his face. “They finally got you an android, and it looks more human than you do! Not that that’d be hard.”

Reed flicks his fingers against the RK800’s LED as he walks past it toward Connor’s desk. “Maybe it’ll let you borrow that little light show off its head, huh, then you can be the man you were always meant to be!”

Once he reaches Connor’s desk he raps his knuckles against Connor’s temple, over the spot where an android’s LED would be. Connor tilts his head away from it, lips pressed tight between his teeth, staring at his desk and listening to that obnoxious, horse-like laughing of Reed’s fade as he walks away.

“Wow,” says the RK800, standing next to him now where Reed had been. “Thought DPD did psych profiles on new hires to weed out egomaniacs like that. What is his _problem_?”

Connor saves the program he’d been working on, then closes it. “I’m done here. That case you were sent for, what’s the address?”

* * *

Ben doesn’t waste time greeting Connor; he’s worked with Connor before, and knows what Connor prefers. That is, facts. Ben gives those facts as quickly as he can and then he leaves, and Connor studies the body while the RK800 wanders from the kitchen back toward him.

“RK800, what are your conclusions?”

“Huh?” It raises its eyebrows at him, like the question caught it by surprise. It twists around, hands balled up in its pockets, to look behind it at the evidence. “Oh, yeah. The attacker was gettin the shit beat out of him with a baseball bat by our friend here, then he snapped and went after the guy with a kitchen knife. Why did you let that cop push you around like that?”

It’s Connor’s turn to be caught by surprise, first by the afterthought that was that summary of nearly their entire crime scene, then by the unexpected question. “Who? Ben?” He turns to look toward the doorway Ben had gone through, wondering if Ben had said something to him that he hadn’t noticed. That happens sometimes, these days.

“No, the guy at the station. Why didn’t you say something? I thought humans didn’t let anyone push em around.”

“Are you suggesting I get in a fight with him next time?” Connor asks, disbelieving.

“Nah, nah I’m not suggesting shit. What do I know? I’m just the help. I just thought, you could have said anything to that creep, and you didn’t. I don't know, I’m just supposed to adapt to the detectives I work with, but I don’t understand what you did back there. It might help us click a little better, if you’d help me get a handle on you.”

“Is that why you’re designed so strangely? To help ‘get a handle’ on people?”

“Not just _people_. Detectives. You think a bunch of grizzled, hardboiled types would open up to some bright young thing who looks fresh out of the factory?” It huffs. “Besides, I’m a prototype. If the public decides it doesn’t like a scuzzy old androids, Cyberlife’ll probably make sure the rest of my line goes back to looking like they stepped off the cover of GQ. Are you uh, gonna answer my question or should I just go check out the rest of this place?”

Connor waves a hand in the general direction of the kitchen, wordlessly.

“Gotcha,” the RK800 says, giving a little nod and spinning on its heel. “Back in a minute, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely share any ideas you have for how this situation might change the rest of the game. (Either here or at my tumblr, my username there is also xiilnek.) I know from the art I've seen that this basic idea is popular but I haven't yet really talked about it with anybody.


	2. 2 - after chasing Kara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I forget I wanted to let y'all know, if there's anything here you feel I could improve on please feel free to tell me. I don't have a beta, so if there's anything you want to share that's the main way I'll know what to do more of and what to do better.

“Your priorities are obviously malfunctioning,” the lieutenant says, shoving open DPD’s door. His voice is deliberate and measured but his steps are quick, and his push at the door was rougher than it needed to be. He hadn’t said a word for most of the drive back. “I should report that to Cyberlife so you can be taken in for repairs.”

“You’d get me _reprogrammed_ because I didn’t let you throw yourself into traffic?”

“Those deviants were getting away! You had no cause to keep me from going after them!”

“And what was your cause for not just letting me do it? You get hit by a speeding car, you’re done. But me? That’s what I’m here for! You don’t trust me to do my job?”

“Oooh,” comes an oily, familiar voice, whose owner managed to come close while the two of them were distracted. “It looks like the android’s forgotten who gives the orders! Maybe it thinks you’re one of them! Hey, who could blame it?”

This again. Hank concludes that detective Reed’s android-related comments from before the Ortiz house weren’t a one-off; now the comments make a pattern. Hank wonders how long it’s been going on. It looks to the lieutenant for his reaction, wanting to analyze the other half of that pattern, and so catches the very moment that all anger completely disappears from the lieutenant’s face.

The reaction is that there is no reaction; lieutenant Anderson looks at Reed blankly and Hank thinks, _You’ll never shut him up that way._ It’s basic emotional intelligence, basic strategy, and Anderson is more than capable of both. So why the hell doesn’t he say anything?

“You better watch that,” Reed goes on, his voice going quiet, sharpening, as he steps close and tries - unsuccessfully - to catch Anderson’s eyes. “One of these days, one of us is going to be shooting at those things and just… forget the difference.”

Hank looks again for even a trace of emotion in Anderson’s face and finds none. The young face is very cold and blank, and the whole of him is terribly still.

A box appears in the corner of Hank’s vision. _System Instability ^_ , it reads, and disappears as quietly as it’d come while Hank steps forward, inserting himself into the increasingly small space between the lieutenant and Reed.

“Sorry, maybe there’s something I’m not understanding but uh, was there something about our case you wanted to share? Cause we’re a little busy and, as a fellow detective, I just know how much you’d hate to waste our time.”

“Woah,” Reed says, and even to Hank’s advanced sensors it’s a mystery how much of his impressed tone is genuine. “Anderson, man. I’d say you need to stop rubbing off on your plastic pet but- shit, maybe if we’re lucky it’ll rub off on you and you’ll actually grow a pair.”

“But you just watch who you take that tone with,” Gavin continues, his eyes, for maybe the first time, actually focusing on Hank’s. “ _RK800_. Some of us won’t waste time arguing with broken equipment.”

Then with a last pointed look at the lieutenant, Reed moves past them and out the door.

“I’m not _broken_ ,” Hank says, wanting to make sure lieutenant Anderson understands that. “I’m a prototype. We’re not _supposed_ to act like other androids.”

It tries to tell whether Anderson accepted that, whether his earlier threat to report Hank to Cyberlife has been mollified, but Anderson’s only looking at Hank with that nothing-expression he’s got. Hank is designed to read people’s expressions but with this person it can’t, it consistently can’t read Anderson, and it is really fucking putting Hank off.

After staring for a couple seconds Anderson just turns and walks away. Hank follows. Anderson sits at his desk and, after a second with no indication as to whether or not he’s welcome, Hank sits at the desk opposite. Guess they’re not talking about the escaped deviant anymore.

That would be fine, if Hank just knew why.

The ‘talk’ with detective Reed’s the most recent thing to happen, and what interrupted their argument. That’s the most likely reason.

Hank’s devoting so much to its integration programs, the ones that’ll be proven failures if it can’t figure this guy out, that it forgets not to stare. It’s not until Anderson looks up at it that Hank remembers that and by that time, of course, it’s too late.

“Is something the matter, RK800?”

“No, no, sorry, um-” It has to say something now, it’s programming is good for knowing that much, so why not ask what it was already wondering? “Why does detective Reed risk getting disciplined and getting marks on his record just to give you shit? It’s a pattern, isn’t it, with him and you? I haven’t seen him be like that with anyone else.”

It’d say Anderson’s expression shutters, if there was anything there to shut away in the first place. Instead the expression tightens for a split second and Anderson blinks, looking away. “He hasn’t been disciplined. He’s not really risking anything.”

“Jesus, why? He’s your coworker. You guys are supposed to work as a unit, get the job done, not take little pieces out of each other all the time.”

“I’m perfectly capable of working with Reed,” Anderson says, coldly. “I’ve never let him get in the way of getting my job done.”

“Well, yeah. I was talking about _him_. He’s being unprofessional as hell.”

“Oh.”

Hank watches him. It files that little tidbit away. “So he hasn’t been disciplined? Doesn’t Captain Fowler know how detective Reed’s acting?”

“I can work with him,” Anderson says, looking down, working on his tablet. “There’s no reason to report anything as long as I can keep it from being a problem.”

Did he speak too quickly, just there? Is his tone a little too brisk? It’s so hard to tell with this guy but given what it’s seen, Hank decides to go out on a limb and say yes.

“That’s your choice, I mean, you’re the officer, and maybe my coding doesn’t understand the way a human brain can. But it seems to me like detective Reed’s the snaggletoothed cog fucking up this department’s wheels, not you. You don’t deserve his shit. You shouldn’t have to deal with that all on your own.”

Anderson’s watching it speak, listening. His tablet’s all but forgotten, and the look on his face is… What is that? Surprise? Maybe. His eyes are wide enough for it. But there’s something open there, too. Something vulnerable.

And then Hank’s face twitches, its LED goes yellow, its eyelids flutter. When it sees Anderson again that look of vulnerability is gone. Shit. Motherfucking _prototypes_.

“Are you alright?”

“Sorry, yeah, it’s just uh, stupid prototype bullshit.They haven’t ironed out the uh, the way the extra space taken up by my experimental programming kinda makes it hard to process basic info sometimes, uh, without making some of my motor controls glitch out. Sorry, I know it’s uh, I know it looks kind of freaky. I’m sure they’ll fix it in the next model.”

“There are humans whose motor control does the same thing. It doesn’t look that unusual.”

“Uh.” Was Anderson trying to comfort him just now? If he wasn’t, thanking him would just be weird. Hank doesn’t know enough about Anderson yet to be sure of the right way to respond. “I uh, yeah. That’s a good point. Anyway, uh, that was me getting a report, I got certain words and phrases flagged if they go through the system, someone just called in about some guy with a light on his head in some apartment complex not too far from here. I guess we ought to go check it out.”

Anderson nods, stands, and moves to leave. Hank follows, wondering if that little talk was a success or not. By the time they get to the car, he still hasn’t decided.


	3. 3 - post-rupert chase

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“RK800, let me go!”

“That’s a _train_!”

“Let me go, and that’s an order!”

“So you can do what? Run on top of the _train_?”

“This is the second time your interference has cost us-“

“Cost you what? A casket? Do you know what the chances were of you even making that jump, let alone staying on the top of a _moving_ _train_? You know lieutenant Reed’s full of shit, right? You know you’re actually human? There’s some shit you just can’t do!”

“Do _you_ know you’ve cost us another suspect, or is your system not registering the fact that he’s getting away? I don’t know why I didn’t report you after the first time, but I won’t make that mistake again! RK800, submit an error report directly to me, so I can make sure Cyberlife knows exactly what to fix in your next model!”

A moment passes.

“RK800, are you capable of delivering an error report, or will I have to tell Cyberlife you can’t do that, either?”

“I- Um, I- Right, um. I... My social integration programs, um, were too aggressive, they interfere with my logic and ability to prioritize. Suggested solution: Considering the, um, the one other released RK model, the RK series should uh, the basic coding of the whole line should probably be scrapped altogether, and all remaining prototypes dismantled. It, um... That’s it. I guess that’s it.”

Hank’s gaze drifts away from the lieutenant’s face. Its legs start to kind of fold up, so it goes ahead and sits. Hank can see the lieutenant’s stare in the corner of its vision but, for once, it doesn’t analyze the look. Why bother? The oh so advanced programming that’d gotten it sent out in the first place has been declared a failure. It’s over.

“The one other RK model?”

Hank stares over the side of the building at the tracks. The train is long gone.

“RK800. That was a question.”

“What? Oh, uh. Yeah. Only one was ever released, a personal gift from Elijah- uh, from Kamski himself to some big artist. Cops got a call saying someone broke in, came to find the artist’s son on the floor - dead, it turned out. The RK200 was standing over his body, they shot it a few times, junked it. Artist guy said later his son was asking for drug money, got aggressive, said the android was just defending itself, like that’s something it was even fuckin programmed for. Cyberlife classified it as a failed model, said the changes Kamski made to its integration protocols were too unstable to be released again without a lot more testing. Guess they didn’t do enough.”

Anderson steps closer, moving slowly. He peers at Hank’s face, but Hank doesn’t look up. Slowly, Anderson sits. “They based a police android on a model whose personality was known to be unstable?”

“That was supposed to be my secret weapon. Kamski did some crazy stuff with the RK series coding, some really intricate integration protocols, lots of stuff that makes lots of other stuff interact with yet more stuff in ways that can be pretty hard to predict. They thought, uh, that kind of instability’d make me good at investigating, make me more creative than the helper bots the DPD gets now. Ends up looking a lot like emotion, too, it turns out, that instability stuff, so they thought I’d get more reactions out of people.” Hank laughs, quietly. “Or, fuck, I don’t know. Kinda sounds like bullshit, saying it out loud. It’s what I was told, anyway.”

“By Cyberlife? You don’t think they would be honest with you?”

“Ah, I don’t have a clue. E- Uh, my handler gives me a lot of little tests. Tells me a lot of shit, tries to see if I pick up on what’s what, how I react. So uh, I thought I knew why I was getting sent out. But who the fuck knows? Doesn’t matter now anyway, does it?”

“Cyberlife will really declare you a failure if I send them one bad report?”

“I fucked up the mission twice in one day, lieutenant. You said that yourself. My priorities are skewed. And I always kind of- I always kind of knew. But everyone always talked about the other stuff, the stuff Kamski put in, like it was some kind of - well, like I said, some kind of secret weapon. So I thought, maybe if I’m good enough at that part no one will care that I, uh- You know, I actually don’t give a shit about the mission? God, it feels good to say that. I guess that’s one good thing about getting scrapped, I don’t have to pretend to give a shit anymore. I don’t give a _shit_ about the mission, lieutenant, I don’t give a shit about some random androids too stupid to stick to their programming, I only felt shitty about losing fuckin train-riding pigeon guy cause _you_ were so freaked out about it.”

The silence prompts it to look over, finally, and see Anderson blinking a few times, looking down, looking distant. Frowning.

“And you don’t get it either, lieutenant. Do you?” Hank laughs again. “Great! Of course. Well, that doesn’t matter either. Not for long.”

“What _do_ you care about?”

“What?”

“You told me what you don’t care about, RK800. That implies that there’s something you do. What is it?”

“I…” Hank thinks. “I haven’t been out in the world all that long, you know? And when I was it was all about ‘the mission’. So, I don’t know, maybe there’s not much. But I guess, after they dismantle me - I still don’t know what your block is with detective Reed, why you clam up so bad when he gets on you, but someday I’d like you to just kick the shit out of him. Or at least give him one good black eye. You’ve got no reason to do a last favor for someone like me but I think it’d be good for you. If just one good thing came out of me being here, even if I fucked up the rest of it - you not getting that look on your face anymore, that look you get when you just... shut down, I think I care about that. You shouldn’t have to feel like that, not on top of uh, of whatever else it is that’s fucking with you.

“I could send that error report myself,” Hank adds, when Anderson doesn’t say anything. “Add your comments in, whatever they are. If I did, I could suggest some things for the next model they send out to the DPD. Something that’ll care about the right shit, that won’t fuck things up for you. You know, ‘the mission’ and all that shit.”

“No,” Anderson says, sounding distant, thoughtful. “I think… I think having your model decommissioned would be premature, at this point. “

“What?”

“I’m saying I spoke rashly, RK800. It’s possible I’m just not utilizing you correctly. Now that I know you prioritize preventing harm that might come to me, I can work around that. If I hadn’t tried to go after the suspect myself, for example, maybe we’d have caught him by now. I should have asked when you arrived, I should have tried to figure out how you operate before we did anything.”

“Are you… You don’t have to apologize to _me_ , you know that.”

“Is it an apology if it’s a fact? It was thoughtless and immature of me to try to destroy a useful piece of equipment just because I never read the manual.”

“Oh,” Hank says, after a moment. “Oh. Well, that’s… Good, I guess? In that case, uh, disregard all the stuff I said about uh, not giving half a shit about deviants.”

Anderson laughs, softly. Hank stares.

“No, that part’s useful to know. Your social integration protocols dictate you care about what I care about, instead. Is that right?”

It takes Hank a second before it can admit it. Hank's already said it, yeah, but that’s when it thought it was going to be junked anyway, and Hank's heard the phrase so long it should probably be a proper noun, at least in it's head: The Mission.

“It’s uh, it’s not that I don’t know the mission’s important.” I swear to complete the mission, the whole mission, and nothing but the mission, so help me Cyberlife. They should make new androids say that, Hank's always thought, but it's never been brave enough to say so. And here Anderson is, the human willing to throw himself onto a train just to get his man, and he’s saying it doesn’t matter that Hank’s a flawed model, a prototype that might as well be essentially nonfunctional, as far as Cyberlife would be concerned, if they knew. Is that what Anderson’s saying?

“But you don’t care if it is. Isn’t that what you just told me?”

“Um. Fuck. No, I don’t. Why does it feel like you’re trying to get me to confess to something?”

“I’m just trying to confirm the facts, RK800. That’s all. What you do care about is people. Is that all people, or specifically me?”

“Uh, I’m not uh, not really sure how my programming shakes out in the real world. That’s kind of, uh, how prototypes work. But so far, uh- mostly you. Cause you’re my assigned partner, I guess.”

“So doesn’t it follow that if I prioritize your mission, you will too? As long as I don’t violate your personal prime directive?”

“My prime directive?”

Anderson shoots Hank a look. Hank smiles a little, but decides to drop it. It knows Anderson’s a trekkie now, that’s enough, and Hank's not sure enough of its place here to risk teasing the lieutenant too much, anyway. “Yeah. I guess so long as you don’t mess yourself up to get the job done, I can try to give a shit.”

Anderson nods and stands, his movements brisk and crisp. “I’ll keep that in mind, going forward.”

Hank frowns up at him. “That’s it? I’m a functional model again, just like that?”

“I don’t know yet. Weren’t you just saying that, that not being sure is how protoypes work? Far be it for me to end an experiment of your caliber before you’ve even had a chance to gather information. Unless you have something else to add?”

“Uh, no. No, I guess that’s it.” Gift horses, mouths, whatever. Hank stands. Even if this gift horse is going to bite Hank in the ass, it doesn’t have the right to ask too many questions. If lieutenant Anderson says it keeps running, it keeps running.

The lieutenant turns and walks away, and Hank follows.


	4. 4 - eden club

Sun blinds Hank from the moment it closes its eyes. It takes longer for Hank’s vision to adjust to the light than it would in the physical world, because that’s exactly the way the creator of this place wanted it, but once it does Hank sees the place very clearly. It sees the ocean beginning to churn with waves, the bright sky, the sand and the beach chair stretched a little ways away on top of it.

“You poser,” Hank says, not moving closer. “You can’t even get a tan.”

The figure laid over the chair moves the old fashioned sun reflector away from its chin to look at Hank, raising its eyebrows.

“Well,” it says in its long, self-assured voice, “Mr. Elijah Kamski can, and I do think I ought to be keeping up with my other self, don’t you?”

Another game, or Hank’s handler being a weird fucker? There’s no telling. The best way to deal with it is just not to play.

“If you say so,” Hank says, and then doesn’t say anything else, even while its handler waits. Maybe if it’s not asked, it won’t have to tell.

“Hank,” its handler says gently, chidingly. “You didn’t come all this way just to stare. Did something go wrong?”

 _I did_ , Hank doesn’t say, and doesn’t try to hide its nervous fidgeting. “It got away. The deviant at those apartments I was telling you we were going to check out. I lost it.”

All Hank gets is a stare, that stupid knowing stare its handler always gives, looking down at Hank - even though Hank’s the one standing up, somehow looking down at it - over those stupid fancy sunlasses.

“We’re just working the kinks out,” Hank goes on, helplessly. “Lieutenant Anderson and me, we’re figuring out how to work together. It’s just growing pains.”

There’s a second, a long second, of heavy, knowing silence.

“How is it going with him?” Its handler asks, looking away, thank god, laying back and stretching out over the chair again. “With Anderson? I’ve got some interesting reports about him. He seems like a very… particular sort of man.”

“God, you have no idea. Every time I try to get some kind of profile on him he trips me up, I was never tested on any human even a little bit like him. But I’ll uh, I’ll get it! He’s just weird, uh, atypical, earning his trust is going to take me longer than usual.”

“A report just came in,” Hank’s handler says mildly, looking up at the sky. “If you want to investigate it, you’ll have to go tear Anderson away and bring him with you. And Hank?”

Its handler waits, makes Hank wait, until Hank’s really focusing.

“Try to play nice. It’s what I made your series for, after all.”

“Oh my god Elijah, you are _such_ a poser, you know you’re not actually-”

“Goodbye, Hank. Remember to tell me how it goes!” Elijah wiggles its fingers at Hank, smiling up at the clear, bright sky, and the world behind Hank’s eyelids goes dark.

* * *

It’s about eight PM and, weirdly, lieutenant Anderson isn’t still at work.

“Looking for something?” asks a young officer, after Hank’s been frowning at Anderson’s desk for a few seconds.

“Lieutenant Anderson. Did he, uh, go home?” Hank can’t keep the ‘if so, what the hell is happening’ out of its voice, and the young officer laughs.

“No, god no. His mom’s throwing one of those parties, fundraisers, you know. If he’s not here he’s usually at one of those. He’ll be back in bright and early, too, just like he always is. I don’t know how the guy does it, he’s like a-”

The officer stops, looking wide eyed and awkward.

“Uh,” he says. “He’s like a, a really hard worker, it’s really very impressive. Uh. You didn’t need him for anything urgent, did you?”

“Kinda but it’s fine, I’ll track him down. And Chris?”

The officer raises his eyebrows.

“You can call someone a ‘machine’ around me,” Hank tells him, smiling a little. “It’s okay. Won’t make me break down in tears.”

Chris laughs. “Yeah, got it. Sorry. Hank, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, you got it. See you later, Chris.”

“You too.”

Chris smiles and Hank waves and then sets out, searching all the databases it has access to for the name of Anderson’s mother, and for her address. It actually takes some asking around before it finds out - not much about her’s on any public record, but no amount of security can stop gossipy coworkers.

That means it’s closer to nine by the time Hank steps out of a taxi on the road outside the place but, it reminds itself, getting info from humans means a little inefficiency is fine.

What’s not fine is - god, Hank should have anticipated this - what’s not fine is the dress code. Getting past the gate was the opposite of trouble, but now that Hank’s at the door watching people go in and out, it doesn’t quite know what to do. It shifts its feet, straightens its shoulders, tries to tug at its jacket, but none of that’s a substitute for a five thousand dollar suit. Hank’s body’s worth at least ten of that but a lot of that money went into making sure no one could tell, and these wrinkles won’t come out of Hank’s fucking jacket.  

Eventually Hank’s internal clock starts nagging at it - it’s no human causing that dreaded i-word, inefficiency, this time - and it accepts that Anderson’s not going to magically come out at just the right moment, takes a breath, and steps into the hallway.

For such a fancy house the entranceway is kind of narrow, making it impossible to miss the pictures on the walls. They show a line of cleancut white men with short dark hair, all in their twenties and thirties, all standing in perfect scenery in perfect clothes with perfect smiles, with a separate picture of their perfect families hanging underneath. Hank’s guess that he’s looking at Anderson’s brothers is confirmed when the man himself is in the last picture in the row, smiling at the camera in a way Hank’s never seen him do in real life. There’s a square underneath Anderson’s picture, a place where the empty wall is colored lighter - not light enough for most humans to notice, but there’s plenty of difference to Hank. It studies the square, measures it, until something nudges its shoulder and it looks to see a woman in a fancy, expensive dress walking by next to a man in an equally fancy, expensive suit. They both stare as they pass Hank and it clears its throat, tugs at a wrinkle in its jacket again, and keeps moving.

It sticks near the edges of the room. Unlike the entranceway most of these rooms are wide and open, which will hopefully make it easy to spot Anderson and get the hell out of here - ah, thank fuck, there he is. Hank’s so relieved that it just nudges its way through the crowd and up to him, not realizing until too late that the two people standing beside Anderson aren’t looking at Hank with confusion, like everyone else, but with focus. They recognize it.

“RK800!” says the man and Hank scans him, mapping his facial structure, running that structure through every database to which it has access, and noting in its own memory any identifying or relevant details. Six point two feet tall, broad, white, sixty-nine years old, employed as senior manager at Cyberlife Research and Development division, legal name Robert Herbert Graves. “Didn’t expect to see you up and walking around, at least not this soon! Found any bugs yet?”

“Robert,” says the woman in a slow, deliberate voice, putting a hand on Graves’s arm, and Hank scans her, too. Five point five feet tall, medium build, black, sixty years old, retired, legal name Amanda Forrest Stern. “No talking about work here, you know that.”

Graves laughs. “Oh, I’m sorry Amanda, I just couldn’t resist! The RK800 here is just a prototype, you know, but the most advanced we’ve come up with yet. We’ll get a full report on its flaws once it finishes its mission, of course, but could you blame me for wanting to learn something a little early?”

“Well, I suppose I can forgive you this time,” Amanda allows, her lips turning up just a little when Graves laughs.

“I’m a lucky man,” Graves remarks, this time to Anderson. “Your mother’s not a woman it pays to annoy, is she Connor?”

“No sir,” says Anderson, with just the right kind of emphasis and just the right amount of smile to make it a joke. “I’ve learned that the hard way.”

“Oh, Connor,” says Stern, patting his arm and sounding fond, amused. “You make me sound like some sort of tyrant.”

“Only the _right_ sort of tyrant, mother,” Anderson says, and while they’re both still laughing he turns to Hank. “RK800, did you have a report for me?”

“Uh,” Hank says, put off by the abrupt change in Anderson’s voice and manner from ‘dinner party guest who’s enjoying himself’ to ‘superior officer who must be obeyed’. It makes Hank think of the error report Anderson’d wanted earlier, but Anderson changed his mind on that, didn’t he? He hadn’t sounded like this the last time they talked, not even a little. Hank goes through its personal database of human behavior to try and figure out a reason for the change. Anderson could be angry, still, though it’d seemed like things were settled earlier - unlikely, as Anderson’s also a very private man, and unlikely to bring a grievance out in a public place like this. It could be something about the party, although he’d seemed to be enjoying himself a moment ago.

Hank’s thoughts take less than a split second, as does the conclusion that it doesn’t have enough information about Anderson to guess. Safest to assume Anderson hasn’t changed his mind about that error report, and just wants to know why Hank is here, instead.

“There’s uh, a development in the case,” it says, trying to prioritize talking to Anderson, rather than analyzing the stares of Anderson’s mother, and of the man who’d overseen the project that created Hank. “A murder. Sorry to interrupt you but uh, I thought the mission might benefit from us investigating as soon as possible. While everything’s still fresh.”

“Us?” Says Stern, before Anderson can respond. “I didn’t know the prototype had been assigned to you.”

Something in her voice is very pointed, and something in her look is, too, but Anderson weathers both with no more than a slow nod. “I didn’t want to interrupt all your preparations for this fundraiser. It’s acting as my partner, for the moment.”

Stern turns her eyes on it, now, and those eyes are cold. “Is that really safe, for an android to be relied on in that way?”

Graves answers, cheerful over there where he can’t see the look on Stern’s face. “That’s what we spent the big bucks on! This baby’s more suited to police support than any other model that’s ever been developed - more suited to being a cop’s partner than other cops, in some ways.”

“Hm,” she says, studying Hank, and Hank is more aware than ever of its uncut hair, its baggy jacket, the wrinkles on its skin. The age on Hank was supposed to give off the sense of someone with experience, someone who could be relied on, but that doesn’t work on her one bit. Nothing Hank was designed to do is suited for this place, for this person, and being so out of place makes its jaw clench, makes it twitchy.

“RK800, didn’t Robert order an error report? Why haven’t you given it?”

“Uh-” Hank rifles through its formality protocols but they don’t fucking help, all the stupid formality protocols tell it is to call her ma’am. “Ma’am, I-”

She just keeps staring, like she’s seeing right through all the carefully crafted bullshit that makes Hank advanced enough to be out in the world in the first place and, you know what, fuck it.

“-I was just wondering if you’re asking me to give out Cyberlife’s sensitive data to someone who doesn’t even do any academic research anymore, let alone has any real standing at Cyberlife. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to give that kinda info out to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who wants to hear it, I mean, that’d make me a pretty shitty excuse for a prototype, wouldn’t it?”

Anderson’s got a hand on Hank’s back and has been trying with increasing urgency, through Hank’s little speech, to turn it and push it away from Stern. Once Hank’s done talking, Anderson’s attempts finally succeed.

“I’m so sorry to have to leave like this mother, Robert,” Anderson says, seemingly calm, seemingly unflappable. “But it’s especially important with murder investigations that the scene of the crime is inspected as soon as possible. Robert, I hope we’ll see each other again. Mother, I’ll call you later.”

Anderson’s hand turns Hank away too quickly to see much of either Graves or Stern’s reaction, and as soon as they’ve made it far enough across the room that the crowd hides them, Anderson turns and hisses in Hank’s ear.

“What the hell was that?”

“Your mom’s freaky as hell! I panicked!”

“ _Panic_ makes you insult one of the most powerful women in Detroit? You might have been able to get away with saying no to her, but the way you did it- is this your normal reaction to stress?”

“I-” Hank frowns, thinking over itself. “I guess, uh. I guess it is. I should probably put that in my error report, huh?”

Anderson takes a breath, visibly calming himself. Hank’s glad to see the gesture - if Anderson’s showing Hank the guy who needs to try to calm himself down, rather than the guy who’d made their escape from his mother so gracefully and blandly a few seconds ago, it means Hank’s made some progress with him. Anderson might not be pleased, but he’s showing that he’s not pleased, and that’s something.

“Note a need for situational awareness in your report,” Anderson decides. “If you’re working with the police reacting to stress with aggression isn’t always inappropriate, but it has to be moderated. It has to be moderated a lot better than that. She’s going to get you taken apart, RK800.”

“Well, she’s gonna have to get in line.”

“Don’t tell me you found someone else to insult at this party too.”

“No, I mean uh, Cyberlife. Getting taken apart’s what a prototype’s for. If she’s real nice to Graves and his bosses, she probably will get a piece of me once they’re done. Literally.” Hank laughs but when it looks over, Anderson’s just frowning. So it stops.

“Don’t worry, they won’t let her until we’re done with this little experiment, the mission, that whole thing. I haven’t done enough to be worth taking apart yet.”

Anderson looks away from Hank, and doesn’t answer. Hank spends a couple seconds trying to analyze the awkwardness, trying to find a reason for it, before it decides that ending that awkward moment is probably a good tactic. What better way to do that than to ask something that’s already on its mind?

“Your mom didn’t know you were partnered up with me. Were you ashamed to tell her?”

“Ashamed? I don’t understand the question.”

“When uh, when the captain took us into his office and told us we were gonna work together there was this look on your face, I didn’t know what to make of it but uh, it kind of seemed like your mom expects to be told shit like that and you didn’t tell her. So.”

Anderson takes a slow breath. “If there was a- a ‘look’ on my face, it was directed at captain Fowler, not you. And not because of you, either. I-”

They’re walking out a back door now, into a parking lot. Anderson sighs, looking around at it. “You said you didn’t know why I haven’t reported Reed’s behavior. I don’t report him because- Because I worry- I suspect sometimes that he’s only saying what the rest of the department’s thinking. Why wouldn’t Fowler put you with me, if he thinks I’m- Well. It’s not you. It’s not your fault that working with you confirms things people already thought about me.”

“Even your mom?”

“No, ah, that’s- she really is very busy, you know. Planning events like this isn’t easy.”

“Yeah.”

Hank thinks over that as Anderson leads them to his car. It thinks about Chris, the friendly officer who’d been about to, without even thinking about it, say exactly what Anderson’s afraid of, and who’d only stopped because Hank was there. “That’s fucked,” Hank decides. “If they’re all biased against you like that then the whole department ought to be torn up and rebuilt.”

“The department functions perfectly well. It’s my responsibility to find a way to work within it, and I can! I do. What they think of me doesn’t affect my ability to do my job.”

“Yeah? Maybe it affects their ability to do theirs.” Hank leans against the car, looking at Anderson over its roof. “If the DPD makes it that easy to alienate one of their own officers like that, then the system’s not functioning. And if the system’s too fucked to function, all of the pieces inside it are fucked, too.”

Anderson watches his arms for a moment, crossed in front of him. He wiggles his fingers, tapping them slowly, one at a time, against the car’s roof.

“You’re not like any android I’ve ever met,” Anderson says, finally, and Hank grimaces, opening up the passenger door and slumping down onto the seat inside.

“Yeah,” Hank says, its words short and clipped. “I know.”

Anderson sits inside the car too but, for a moment, doesn’t start it. For a moment he just looks at Hank and Hank looks down, shoulders rising, slumped against the window.

“After meeting with my mother,” Anderson says, reaching in his pocket, “I usually need… Something. Something to do with my hands.”

Out of his pocket Anderson pulls a quarter, holding it out toward Hank and raising his eyebrows. “There are plenty of exercises you can do with something like this, and I’ve found that it helps. Or at least, it helps me. Android reflexes probably make you fairly good at it, if you’d like to learn.”

Hank looks at the quarter, the scowl on its face slowly shifting, without Hank really telling it to, into a smile. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried before. Why don’t you show me?”

Anderson pulls his hand back toward him, the quarter already beginning to dance over the backs of his fingers. Hank watches him and heckles a little, and it’s a solid five minutes before either of them remembers they’re supposed to be driving somewhere.

* * *

“I just wanted to stay alive,” says the android, wrapping its hand around the hand of the one beside it. “Get back to the one I love.”

They gaze at each other a moment, then it continues. “I wanted her to hold me in her arms again. Make me forget about the humans. Their smell of sweat, and their dirty words.”

“Come on,” says the android and looks toward the other again, head tilted toward it, its voice low, intimate. “Let’s go.”

“RK800!” shouts Anderson as the androids walk together toward the fence. “Stop them!”

Anderson shouts again, sounding scared, urgent. “If you fail again, Cyberlife will destroy you! Complete your mission!”

Hank stares after them. Hank breathes, and watches their entwined fingers, and the gun in its hand shakes.

“ _Shoot them!_ ” Anderson shouts, sounding frantic, unhinged, and scrambles across the space between them, and pulls the gun out of Hank’s unresisting hand, and fires two shots, perfectly aimed.

Hank is aware of the sound of two heavy thumps.

“We had an agreement,” Anderson insists, his voice unsteady, probably from adrenaline. “I told you I’d care about your mission when you can’t.”

Hank is aware of the sound of the rain, falling.

Anderson bites at his lip and tries again. “They wouldn’t let you fail a third time, RK800. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Hank manages, dully. “Cyberlife’ll be pleased. My mission is a success. Thanks to you.”

Hank is aware of the sound of Anderson swallowing, of the sound of his deep, shaking breaths.

“We’ll-” Anderson pauses, stumbling, trying to make it to his feet. “We’ll get the- the androids back to the station. We’ll tell someone to work on them. Maybe then we’ll get a break in our investigation.”

Hank is aware of the sprawling way the androids are laid out, of the way their arms are stretched. Their fingers are almost touching; they are not quite holding hands.

“You know what,” Hank says, in a faint voice that its audio receptors don’t catch quite right, a voice that seems to come from outside its body, “I think, uh, I think I’ll walk. You do all that and I’ll, uh. I’ll do a diagnostic. Make sure uh, none of my parts got shook up in the fight. I’ll catch you up tomorrow.”

“Um,” it hears Anderson say, and doesn’t look around to analyze whatever expression Anderson is making with it. “That’s fine, just- meet me at the station tomorrow. I’ll call you when there’s something to report.”

“Yeah,” answers Hank in that same faint and far away voice. “Yeah, I’ll see you.”

Hank stands. Hank walks past Anderson, looking straight out in front of itself, and walks back into the club, and through it, and out the club’s front door. It walks onto one street and then onto another, and then another, absently marking its route on an internal map as it goes. Anderson doesn’t follow, not that night and not the next day, either. Anderson doesn’t call, and Hank doesn’t come.

He must still be out working, Hank thinks. Anderson must still be out hunting down deviants, somewhere.


	5. 5 - stratford tower

“I thought you’d like a little ride today,” says its handler, as mild and self satisfied as ever.

Hank looks down at the paddleboat in front of it. Hank sighs. Hank climbs in.

Elijah starts working its feet at the pedals immediately. Hank does not. The boat drifts gently, curving to one side, and bumps into the dock.

Elijah looks at Hank, raising a single elegant eyebrow. Hank rolls its eyes and starts pedaling.

Once the boat’s course is straightened out the prodding begins. “So. How did it go?”

Hank pedals like the wind. It won’t get away that way, it knows. But it helps to pretend. “It, uh, went.”

Hank forces itself to add, before its handler decides it needs to be prompted: “We got them. Two, uh- two deviants, this time. You should be getting their, their bodies, as soon as the cops are done with them.”

“Hm,” its handler says and leans back, looking at the sky. Elijah’s legs are moving gracefully and slowly, and the course of the boat is starting to curve. Hank forces itself to slow.

“Things were tricky for you at first, weren’t they?” Elijah says, blandly, still looking up. It might as well be talking to itself, or the sky. “With the mission, and all that. But you finally did it. Not one but two deviants eliminated. Congratulations.”

_Instability ^_ , Hank sees, and focuses on pedaling for a while.

“But that’s not all, is it?”

“ _What?_ ”

Androids don’t have adrenaline, of course. But they - or at least, the police and military support models - do have a kind of fight or flight response. Hank’s is trying to activate, now.

“Your first party, Hank. The fundraiser. Unless there’s something you’d like to tell me?”

Hank takes the loophole in that question and holds onto it with everything it has. There’s nothing it _wants_ to say, for sure. “Nope. No sir. Just not sure what else could be more important than the deviants, you know?”

“Oh, I know. But I am curious. Your ability to integrate in a formal setting is of some interest to me, if not to you.”

“Uh. Yeah, the party. I didn’t stay long so I didn’t really have time to talk to uh, more than one or two people.”

“Mhm? Which one or two people?” Elijah starts pedaling faster and Hank glances at him, then speeds up its pace, wanting to keep up before it fucks up the path of the boat again.

“Just uh, Robert Graves, guy who works at Cyberlife, said he knew me. And my uh, the cop they partnered me up with, his mom. I just kind of told them what I needed the lieutenant for and then left.”

“And how was she?”

Hank glances over again but, as usual, Elijah isn’t interested in giving Hank enough to figure out what it’s looking for. “She, uh- scary, honestly. No offense but I think I’ll just practice my integration shit for a while before I try to be in the same room with Dr. Stern again. If that’s alright with you.”

“Hm.”

Hank waits for more. Hank doesn’t get more. Hank spends the next minute or so wondering really hard if it should ask.

“Time to wake up, Hank,” Elijah says, his paddling slowing and coming to a stop. Hank is slow to catch on and the boat curves for a second into an abrupt, confused little turn.

Elijah just keeps staring up above him, placid, at the simulated clouds, and drawls his explanation up at the idea of sky. “You’re getting a call.”

* * *

“RK800?”

Hank leans against a building, watching cars go by. People stare as they pass it. They’ve been staring, almost as much as they had at that damn party. That’d been weird, realizing that. It hadn’t been the shitty wrinkled clothes that had made them stare in the first place, it’d just been… Hank.

It’s been passing the time wondering if it should wear some kind of sandwich board every time it goes out in public. ‘Not a weird old guy who just wants this on his jacket,’ the board would say. ‘Actual real life android.’ Or maybe, ‘take a picture, it’ll last longer.’ It’s wanted to say that to a few people, maybe more than a few, but it keeps thinking of the way Anderson’d pushed it away from his mother and then it bites its tongue. If it pisses the wrong person off now, there’s no friendly human to intervene for it.

At least at the police station, everyone’d already got their staring over with.

Hank turns its head away from the sidewalk to look instead at the potted plant sitting at the office door in front of it. Watching cars wasn’t that interesting, anyway.  

“Yeah,” it says and then, off what on the other end of the call is probably an awkward silence, goes on with, “Unless you got any other friends you call with a serial number?”

“Um,” Anderson says and Hank wonders if the same thing’s tripping them both up just now, the same word that Hank had used without actually thinking about it. Hank would bet Anderson couldn’t count his friends on one hand because you can’t count to zero, and even if he could Hank - or, you know, _RK800_ \- wouldn’t be among them.

“No,” Anderson says, instead of any of the mean bullshit Hank probably would have said in his place. “But there’s a crime scene for us. You should have seen it on the news.”

“Yeah well, thought you said you’d call me when you wanted me there.”

“You said you would come in.”

“Oh.” The lieutenant been waiting for Hank. That’s not what Hank thought was going on, and it has to kind of blurt the realization out, just to be sure. “You were waiting for me.”

“I told you I’d call when I had something to report. I didn’t, so it didn’t feel… appropriate.” And then, just when Hank’s starting to soften toward him - it doesn’t know if it wants that to happen, but it’s happening - the uncertainty in Anderson’s voice hardens. “But we have a crime scene now, unless you have other business.”

“No,” it says, hunching its shoulders as a crowd of humans moves past, their androids trailing behind them. “No, I don’t have any other business.”

It sighs. “I’ll be there.”

* * *

Most of the elevator ride passes in silence. Anderson’s hands are low at his sides but the far one holds a coin and Anderson keeps passing it silently, fluidly, over his fingers. None of the tricks he showed Hank a couple days ago are anywhere to be seen; there’s just the coin, moving endlessly.

“I’m not going to blame you,” Anderson says, and it’s not Hank’s fault it’s got no idea what the guy means; Anderson does say it kind of out of the blue.

“What?”

“In my final report, after this is over. It’s your integration protocols, it’s not your fault they’re too aggressive. If it wasn’t for that you’d never have tried to let those suspects get away.”

Hank looks at him, carefully. “Generous of you,” it says, and Anderson frowns at it.

The elevator’s doors open.

“Hank,” Chris says as they step out. “Lieutenant Anderson.”

When Chris greets it first Anderson glances at Hank. Then he frowns at Chris, biting his lip.

“It’s good to see you,” Anderson tries, “Um…”

“Chris,” Chris finishes for him, when Hank doesn’t.

“Chris. Right, yes. Sorry. So, what’ve we got?”

Hank walks along a step behind them, listening, looking around the hall and then the broadcast room. It studies Anderson and finds him crisp and composed. The earnest expression when he’d tried to greet Chris has turned into something focused and intent, and the quarter is gone.

Once Special Agent Perkins swaggers off Anderson turns away from him - “Yes _sir_ ,” he mutters, once the man’s out of earshot - and he and Hank talk over their options.

“I’d like a look at the roof, but those androids…” Anderson taps his fingers against his side, thinking about it. “If we’ve got a spy here, it could be dangerous to leave it alone any longer than we have to. I still can’t believe it didn’t occur to anyone that one of those androids might be deviant!”

“Not everyone sees androids when they look at em, lieutenant. You realized cause you’ve never let a detail slip by you in your life, but these guys? No one expects, say, their table to jump up and commit armed robbery, you know? It’s not how people think.”

“It’s how a police officer thinks,” Anderson mutters, sullen. “Not a one of these men will ever be suited for detective work.”

“Aw, Chris isn’t that bad.”

“Do you really think that, RK800? Or are you just saying that because he likes you?”

“Ooh,” Hank says, half its mouth curling up. “Catty.”

Anderson glares and spins on his heel, striding away. “I’ll look into our spy. You go look at the roof.”

Hank stares after him, its smirk fading. Investigating two possible leads at once is efficient. It’s the way most likely to progress the investigation - and therefore the mission - quickly. Hank’s agreement with the lieutenant stipulates that it trust him when it comes to that mission, but-

_Instability ^_

“Lieutenant,” Hank says, hurrying after him. “I’m the one who’s probably going to get anything out of it. Remember the Ortiz case? If it feels like it’s just us androids there, it’ll be more likely to talk.”

Anderson slows, his jaw tightening, obviously not pleased. “I’ll be outside the door,” he allows, grudgingly. “A two-man interrogation might succeed where yours can’t.”

Shit, it’s like not doing every single bit of work himself actually physically hurts the guy. Hank wouldn't be surprised. It gives Anderson a tight smile as it opens the door, moving past him. “Good plan. I’ll call you.”

Hank walks up to the line of androids and Hank cajoles. Hank threatens. Hank puts pressure on all the right emotional places and uses the words _deviant_ and _destroy_ a lot.

Hank leans back over the counter and gasps, real pain exploding across its internal sensors for the first time. Its fight or flight response struggles to put something together, some kind of plan, but the pain shines so bright that its thoughts keep sputtering out under the light of it.

“Connor!” Its voice is thready and desperate, terrified. Not loud enough. “Connor, please, I, I need help.”

Hank has a thought, brief enough to make it through the pain: more noise. It flails, and knocks over a chair. Its thrashing head sees the knife pinning it to the counter, and the obstacle there is so obvious now that its logic cannot fail to tell it what to do.

Its internal clock keeps flickering; it keeps losing track of how long pulling out the knife takes. Once the knife is gone it collapses to the floor, the impact jolting the empty spot in its stomach hard enough that, for a time, it actually can’t read any of its own thought processes.

“The android,” it hears, and realizes the sounds it’s hearing are a door being shoved open, and lieutenant Anderson’s voice. “It’s going-”

There is no more sound from that direction, and Hank doesn’t dare waste the energy it would take to look up.

“My heart,” it rasps, reaching out and pressing its fingers against the floor and pulling hard. The part of its body over there, that isn’t called a heart. Hank can’t remember what it is.

It registers pressure on its shoulder and movement as it’s turned, registers the jolt through the edges of the hole inside it as it’s flopped onto its back.

“Hang on,” says a voice, its tone so thready and unfamiliar that Hank struggles for a moment to match it to its identity. “Just hang on, please, please-”

“Heart..” it manages, forcing its arm to flop down in just the right direction, pointing its finger. It hears quick and shaking breaths. Too quick, some part of it, bizarrely, manages to register. That breathing’s too fast for a human.

Then something slams into the hole inside it just slightly out of alignment, turned just the wrong way to scrape against its insides, and the only thing Hank registers is the high, screaming white noise its mouth makes.

“ _Shit_ , shit shit shit shit shit! I’m sorry, oh, oh god. Oh god,” it hears and can’t try to make sense of, and the thing sitting in the hole inside of it twists, and Hank registers a timer in front of his vision again. Hank registers that the timer has reset. It’s reset to hours, now, instead of seconds.

It registers, now, that the too-quick breathing above it is coming from a lieutenant Connor Anderson, who just saved its life. It registers the slow tickle of thirium leaking down its stomach, and the fact that its thirium pump regulator isn’t aligned properly, and hasn’t sealed.

It realizes that it forgot what that part was called, a moment ago. It realizes that it was very close to death.

It realizes what Anderson had been saying when he’d first run into the room.

“The deviant,” it rasps, breathless, still hurting. “The deviant. It’ll hurt people. Did you… Did you get it?”

“I…” It takes Anderson’s eyes a second to focus on Hank. He looks lost. “I was going to ask you, I didn’t know it, it wasn’t um, wasn’t safe.”

Hank pushes itself upright, gritting its teeth against the pain but not able to stop the noise that comes out. “It’ll kill people, we- I’ve gotta get up.”

Anderson’s hands clutch desperately at its shoulders. “Don’t- Don’t move. Don’t move.”

The pain isn’t so bad that it can’t read its file on Anderson and decide what language will get through to him. “The mission, lieutenant. I’ll fail my mission if we don’t get up. You told me you’d help me stop doing that.”

“I- Yes. Yes i-it’s out there. Headed toward the elevator.”

Anderson’s hands clutch at Hank and he helps it push itself up and together, somehow, they make it out of the room. Together, somehow, they dash down the hall, stumbling, until the deviant spins around toward them and shoves at the guard next to it and takes the guard’s gun.

Hank pushes itself in front of Anderson. It feels something push into the space between its arm and its body and the something is Anderson’s hand, and what it’s holding is Anderson’s gun. In the moment the gun fires its first shot Hank sees that Anderson’s hand is shaking. With inhuman speed it wraps its own hand over Anderson’s unsteady one and Anderson tightens his finger again and tightens it a couple more times and then the deviant falls, and is still.

Hank sways, stumbles, isn’t quick enough to coordinate its feet and begins to fall. Anderson catches it and pulls his arm away from Hank’s stomach and stares, horrified, at the thirium dripping down his hand.

“Hank,” he breathes and Hank feels betrayed, not by Anderson but by that stupid asshole lying shot in front of the elevator, or maybe just by fate itself, that it’s here that Hank finally hears Anderson use its name, here in public in a hallway full of people.

“I’m fine. It’s just my thirium pump regulator, it’s not all the way in, that’s all.”

“I… I didn’t put it in right?”

“You were great! You saved my life. It’s fine,” Hank says, and wobbles backward again and Anderson catches him, looking not even a little bit convinced.

“I’m fine,” Hank says again. “Just… dizzy. Yeah, I guess that’s what this is.” It spends a second analyzing the feeling. “Weird.”

Anderson’s breathing is starting to speed up again, and his fingers are clutching at Hank’s jacket, and everyone that deviant almost shot is standing around fucking staring at them like lieutenant Connor Anderson feeling his goddamn feelings is some kind of circus attraction.

A part of Hank reminds it that they’ve all had an emotional shock too, and that the two of them just saved lives, and that it’s totally reasonable to stare. Hank tells that part of itself that its irritation - not to mention Anderson’s privacy - takes priority.

“Welp, love to stay and help you guys clean this up, but I need repairs and the lieutenant’s the only one of you I trust to do them, he’s got clearance, you know? So.”

Hank gives a tight, bright smile and jerks its thumb over its shoulder. It raises its eyebrows at Anderson but the guy only looks at him. Hank notices that Anderson is starting to shake.

“The kitchen should be fine,” Hank prompts, nodding in the same direction his thumb pointed a second ago and then, off Anderson’s lack of reaction, it tries: “It’d be cool if you could come with me. I kind of need you to help me get there. Think you could do that?”

“Um. You- Yes. Yes, of course,” Anderson says and somehow, together, they shuffle on down the hall. Anderson swallows when they stop at the doorway but it’s the only real room on the whole floor, so Hank leads them into it. Falling into a chair hurts and Hank grunts, grits its teeth, and presses a hand against its stomach.

“I, I need to take care of that,” Anderson says, kneeling in front of Hank’s chair. “I need to fix it. How do I fix it?”

“Um.” Hank really doesn’t want to say this. Saying it makes Hank think about it happening, and it doesn’t want to do that, either. “You gotta, um, take it out, twist about ten degrees clockwise from how it is now, then once it’s in turn it about ten more. You uh, think you can do that?”

“Of course.”

“Great,” Hank says, meaning exactly the opposite, and tilts its head back to grit its teeth at the ceiling.

It waits a second. It waits a couple seconds more.

“Um,” it says, rolling its head back down to look at Anderson. “Something up?”

Anderson’s eyes are wide. His hand hovers in front of Hank’s stomach, and it is shaking.

“No,” Anderson says, swallowing. “No, I have it. I, I can fix this.”

“Hey,” Hank says, leaning forward and taking Anderson’s shoulders. “It’s fine, okay? Even if it doesn’t go in right, as long as it’s in I got a good hour before irregular thirium distribution really starts fucking me up, and if it comes to that we still got time to go to a Cyberlife store and get help from someone there, okay? There’s nothing bad happening here. You saved the day.”

“You- When I put your thirium pump regulator in the wrong way, you sounded… You sounded like you were in pain.”

Hank looks away, shoulders hunching. “Well. That’s, uh, that’s probably a design bug, experiencing sensory warnings to that degree is probably something they’ll want to fix in the next model. It’s uh, it’s not a big deal. Probably just a prototype thing.”

Anderson opens his mouth, eyes darting from Hank’s face to its stomach and back again. Anderson closes his mouth. He nods. He grips the relevant spot on Hank’s stomach, still clearly visible like it will be until all Hank’s parts are in right.

Hank leans its head back again so Anderson won’t see its teeth gritting, won’t see the look on its face, but the vibration, the hum that makes it out of Hank’s mouth is something it can’t stop. The uptick in sensory output from its stomach makes the hum leaking out between its teeth get higher and louder, and it’s not until the unsteady, whimpering noises have faded and the internal warnings stop whiting out Hank’s thought processes with the _click_ of its thirium pump regulator sliding into place that it realizes Anderson’s making a noise too.

He’s breathing hard and he keeps looking from Hank to behind it, still making that noise, and Hank looks behind itself to find what Anderson’s looking at - those other androids, it looks like, standing there and staring straight ahead at nothing.

“Hey, lieu-lieutenant.” Hank shoves the last stammering traces of pain out of its voice and leans forward, grasping Anderson’s shoulders again and trying to get him to meet its eyes. “Anderson. Hey.”

Anderson swallows once, then again, and gasps a breath.

“Hey, look at me,” Hank says, sliding its hands up from Anderson’s shoulders to his jaw. “Don’t look at them, don’t worry about them, if they were going to attack us they’d have done it by now, they don’t give a shit. Don’t look at them, look at me.”

Anderson does, visibly trying to shut down the look on his face and not quite getting there.

“You’re fine. You’re okay. You did good, fixed me right up, see?” Hank leans back a little, showing the trail of thirium drying down its middle. “I’m not even leaking anymore. It’s fine.”

“I know. You’re fine, I know that. This is- It’s just a reaction to the adrenaline, I’ll be alright in a moment.” Anderson swallows and starts making that noise again, that little moan locked behind lips pressed tight between his clenched teeth, and covers his mouth like that’ll push whatever this is back down and out of sight.

“Hey,” Hank says, its voice aiming really hard for reassuring instead of freaked, and hitting a little bit of both. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s just us here, if anyone tries to come in I can lock the door remotely. You can have whatever kind of reaction to those freaky human hormones you want and no one’ll know, okay?”

A laugh stutters out of Anderson and a sob follows it, and Hank lets Anderson’s jaw slip out from its grip as another sob rocks him forward. Hank puts a hand on the back of Anderson’s head, listening to his painful, half choked noises and rubbing its thumb over his hair.

A part of it is trying to file all this new knowledge away, trying to classify the difference between knowing the definition of pain and really feeling it, between knowing and hearing it, the difference between watching its old emotional demonstration videos and sitting here processing the noises of a friend really suffering right here in front of it.

“How long has it been since you cried?” it asks, speaking on a hunch.

“Three-” Anderson swallows hard, clenches his teeth for a moment, and leans even further forward, his voice shaking out against Hank’s chest. “Three years.”

“Yeah,” Hank murmurs, raising its other hand to cup the back of Anderson’s neck. “That sounds about right.”

“Hey, you know what,” Hank goes on. It’s successfully scrubbed all the nerves from its tone now, and the quiet reassurance is all that’s left. “You’re freaked out, that’s okay. You’re kind of repressed as hell and that’s, you know, that’s okay too. But no one can keep all that shit in forever. It’s not how you guys work. Believe me, I was _created_ to navigate all this human feelings shit, I’d know. And you’re safe here. I won’t let anyone in. For all they know, you’re still fixing me up.”

“I’m not- Thi-this isn’t me.” Anderson takes a big, gulping breath. “Can’t afford it. I have responsibilities. So much I haven’t gotten done. Other officers- they let themselves fall behind. I can’t. I can’t fall behind.”

Hank’s quiet for a couple seconds. There’s a lot of context there that it doesn’t have, a lot of shit going on there that it just has to note and move on from, and hope it gets the context later.

“Well,” it says, thinking. “I’m still feeling kind of uh, kind of dizzy. Think you have time to hang out with me for a little bit? Just till I get back on my feet?”

Anderson gulps again and looks up, blinking tears out of his eyes to try and focus on Hank’s face. “You… almost died.”

“Yeah.” Hank realizes its voice cracked a little there. It imagines it, dying, another RK800 sent out to the station with all the errors accumulating in Hank’s programming fixed, its system all neat, cleaned out. Another RK800, a better one, walking up to lieutenant Anderson and introducing itself as Hank, like it’s his friend. “Yeah, I almost did.”

“When I came in here and saw you on the floor like that, it, it felt…”

“Felt what?”

“Just like…” Anderson presses his hand against his mouth again, shaking his head. “I can’t.” A sob breaks out against his palm and tries to choke it back, squeezing his eyes closed. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” Hank says and then breathes out a, “Fuck,” wanting to scrub the memory of those choked half noises coming out of Anderson’s mouth from its memory, knowing it could, if it decided to, knowing it never will.

“Okay,” it says, thinking, running its hand slowly over Anderson’s hair. “So. You know my uh, my social integration shit, it’s overactive, we’ve been over that, right? You were just telling me that on the way up here. And what it keeps telling me is that you’re hurt, that holding all this back is hurting you. It’s like this little.. This alarm bell in my head, and until you let this shit go it’s not gonna stop.”

“I’m sorry, I-” He locks a moan behind his teeth until it turns into this horrible strained hum, and then he gulps in a breath and tries again. “I should be better than this. I am better than this. I can control this.”

“What-” Hank starts, as Anderson leans back. Hank leans forward, his hands sliding down to clutch at Anderson’s shoulders.

“No!” Hank goes on, “Fuck no, that’s not what I said! I just meant let yourself cry, not- not all that shit.”

“Christ,” it says, and tries to tighten both its hands on Anderson’s shoulders and surprises itself by flinching. “Ow,” it says, reflexively, at the text that pops up in the corner of its eyes. “Shit uh, ignore me, error message just surprised me, uh, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Wh-what…” Anderson swallows, forcing something down, and takes a breath. “What error message? What’s wrong?”

“Just my hand, uh, the deviant pinned it to the counter with a knife so it’d take longer for me to get to my, uh - to fix myself.”

Anderson’s eyes widen.

“And this was not the time to tell you that, huh? It’s okay, it’s um, just a hand, mechanical shit, not a big deal.”

“I didn’t notice,” he murmurs, looking over both Hank’s hands. “I can fix it. I’ll actually fix it this time, I can do a better job than I did with your thirium pump regulator. ”

“Um,” Hank says, looking down at him, a little unnerved. “Let’s just sit here for a while, okay? Focus on you for a second? Can we do that?”

“I’m alright,” Anderson murmurs distractedly and, weirdly enough, he does look steadier. He swallows, takes a deep, slow breath, and stands. Hank’s hand catches at his arm as he does and his lips curl up a little. It makes Hank think of Anderson’s picture, the one it’d seen at his mom’s house, the friendly, professional way he’d smiled in it. This smile isn’t as wide as that, and it’s still at least half put-on, probably, meant to reassure.

Hank decides this smile is at least 45% more real than the one Dr. Stern and all her party guests get.

Anderson walks over to the counter and starts going through its drawers. Hank watches him as he does it, watches as he sniffs and wipes at his cheek absently and then hesitates, biting at his lip, his hand hovering in the air. Then he grabs a napkin and wets it under the sink, ducking his head. He turns further away as he wipes his face with it, like he’s trying to hide it, like he wasn’t pressed so tight against Hank’s shirt a minute ago that Hank could feel the vibrations from all the sounds he wouldn’t let himself make. Like Hank doesn’t have the guy’s snot stains on its jacket, for fuck’s sake.

Anderson clears his throat, head still ducked as he throws the napkin away, and starts going through the drawers again. “I’m assuming you need small tools for those kind of repairs?”

“Depends on what’s out of place but yeah, pretty small. I’d be surprised if there was anything in here that could do it.”

“There’s nothing in here. Cups, spoons.” Anderson tosses this next drawer shut like it’s personally insulted him. “ _Napkins_ ,” he adds, in a tone of such utter disgust that Hank can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, how dare they not stock up on the very specific tools for fiddly repairs to nonessential android parts.”

“Well there are androids working here.”

Hank snorts, a helplessly fond noise. “Well, at least you’re consistent.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothin,” is what Hank does say. _At least you go as hard on everyone else as you do on yourself_ , is what Hank doesn’t. Hank raises its hands, standing. “Just all these alerts from this uh, whole hand thing-” It tries wiggling the fingers of the broken hand to demonstrate, and the fingers just kind of twitch a little. “-must be distracting me, making me run my mouth. Don’t worry about it.”

Anderson frowns but, thankfully, seems to decide there are more important things to be talking about. “Where would we get what you need for that? A Cyberlife store?”

“Yeah, probably. They’d want to do it themselves though.”

“They don’t let people repair their own androids?”

“Their _own_ androids?”

“Well- Cyberlife’s loaning you. I know that. But you are in my care.”

“That why you’ve gotta do all my repairs yourself, don’t wanna let some employee handle it?”

Ooh, Anderson doesn’t like that question. “I know how to do basic electronic repair. As long as you’re able to talk me through anything more complicated, why couldn’t I fix you?”

Not really what Hank asked. But it’s got no reason to push Anderson, especially not right now, and maybe this could be its way in to getting the guy to actually go somewhere else and take a break, rather than just going back to the station after this and piling on more stress.

“Good point,” it says, obviously throwing Anderson, who looks like he’d been bracing for a fight. “So, what were you planning on fixing me with? Plastic forks?”

Anderson’s surprise disappears. There’s the answer with the bite he was expecting.

“No,” Anderson says. “I should still have something at my apartment. Would you show me what kind you need, so I can be sure?”

Hank holds its functioning hand palm-up and shows a couple holograms and Anderson nods, studying them.

“I have these, the tools, but the others we might have to buy. Those tubes, are they…” Anderson thinks about it. “Your veins?”

“Pretty much. The paper and the little bottle’s for my skin.”

“I don’t have any of that. Will they sell them to me if I don’t tell them it’s for a prototype?”

“Eh, probably. Stores close soon, though.”

“Then we should get going.” Anderson walks briskly past the two blankly staring androids and up to the door. Hank glances at them, then follows.

* * *

 They pull up in front of an apartment building with high, curving windows and graceful architecture, and Hank cranes its neck to get a good look at the whole thing before they pull into the basement parking garage. It’s in a nice part of town, just about fifteen minutes away from the nice part of town Hank was in earlier for Dr. Stern’s party, and it is absolutely out of a detective’s paygrade. Hank’s dedicated a part of its processes to digging around for the payment records for the various apartments in it before they’ve even walked up to the lobby.

It refines its search once it knows Anderson’s apartment number, when they stop in front of Anderson’s door - not that it’s hard to guess which door is his since the apartments are pretty big, with room for only two to a floor.  Anderson asks Hank to wait while he goes inside, but instead of being gone for a minute and coming out with the tools he just comes out a couple seconds later to beckon Hank in, fingers slipping out from his pocket.

The decor, once Hank’s in and looking, is familiar; the quality of the paint on the walls, the way the furniture hugs the edges of the room to create a wide, open space, even the design of the furniture itself makes Hank feel like it might well be in a nice part of town about fifteen minutes away, in a large house with lots of guests.

It isn’t really a shock when the name on the account that pays the rent on this particular apartment turns out to be Amanda Stern.

“I’ll go get my tools,” Anderson says, pulling Hank’s attention away from a rectangular discoloration on the wall just next to the door. The nice, expensive paint is lighter there, not enough for a human to notice, but plenty enough for Hank.

“Sure,” Hank says, and takes Anderson’s departure as permission to snoop. First, the kitchen: In the upper cabinets it finds finely crafted plates, thin, delicate bowls, and a whole lot of dust. In a drawer it finds silverware and more dust. The space under the sink is empty, and the cabinet beside it holds cans of dog food, covered in dust, their labels faded.

There’s a noise in the direction Anderson went, the noise of wood sliding against wood and the slap of something being set on the floor, and Hank does a quick comparison of the value of whatever it might learn from the fridge and bookshelf with the value of whatever it might learn from wherever Anderson is.

Anderson’s in a bedroom, turns out. He’s kneeling in front of a small dresser next to the bed, a drawer pulled out and its false bottom set out on the floor beside him. Hank steps closer to look over Anderson’s shoulder and those shoulders hunch, Anderson ducks his head, but he doesn't tell Hank to back off.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” Hank says, since its look at the drawer isn’t yielding anything obviously interesting.

“Oh, um-” Anderson pauses, surprised, and lets go of the little toolbox he’d been about to pull out to turn toward Hank. “I- I did. I used to.”

“Oh, uh, sorry, how did it…?”

“Oh no, no,” Anderson clarifies, hurriedly. “He didn’t die. He just… He was miserable here, alone all day without even a yard.” He turns back to the drawer, pulling the toolbox out. “I found a family who wanted to take him in. He does best in family homes. He’s… I’m sure he’s happier this way.”

Anderson avoids Hank’s eyes. Hank watches him. “What did, uh- what does he look like?” it asks, instead of saying something unlikely to get a good reaction like ‘I’m sorry,’ or something too true, like ‘God, I hope the rest of humanity isn’t as sad as you.’

“Oh I have, um, they sent me a picture,” Anderson says, reaching in the drawer again. He pulls out a chip, taps it, and a hologram expands out It’s one of the high end holo frames, looking almost as solid as a more old fashioned picture, and Hank can see every hair on the dog’s huge head where it rests on an unfamiliar girl’s lap. Nearly her whole lap is covered, and nearly the rest of her, too; the only parts of her that can be seen are her knobbly knees, her shoulders, and her smiling face.

“That’s their daughter. They tell me she and Sumo are inseparable.”

Anderson stares at the picture. Then he reaches behind it to tap its chip again, turning away from Hank as the picture disappears to tuck the chip very carefully back into the precise space from which he’d pulled it.

“There’s a table out on the balcony,” he says, picking his toolbox up and getting to his feet. “I should be able to work on your hand properly there.”

He moves out of the room and, after a last glance at the photo chip tucked quietly away in its drawer, Hank follows.

The table, of course, is well made. The view is something fancy party guests would probably call ‘exquisite’. Cold air blows into the slice in Hank’s hand and it wonders if it should have tried to insist Anderson wear a coat.

“Can you verify that I’m getting everything I need to as I do it? Or can you only sense that once I’m done?”

“Oh no, I can feel it.”

“Oh, but you-” Anderson’s hands freeze in place. His eyes are wide, worried. “You don't seem like you did earlier, when I- with your thirium pump regulator. Is this…”

“Nah, this is nothing like that. It’s just a hand. I’d be even more of a fucked up prototype if I got major danger warnings from that.” Hank grins a little but Anderson just watches him, then nods and bends back over his hand.

“There’s a spot just to the left - there. Yeah. It sheared kind of funky, you’re going to have to cut a bunch off.” For a moment Hank just watches him work, watches his focus, the precise, confident way he moves the tools around in such a small space. “When you said you had experience with electronic stuff you weren’t kidding, were you?”

“No,” Anderson says absently, focusing on cutting the next damaged wire. “It has been a while, but this kind of repair is a great deal simpler than building something from scratch.”

“What did you build?”

“Oh,” Anderson says, looking up from Hank’s hand like being asked surprises him. Then he looks back down, the tools moving more slowly. “Lots of models. A working train set, a remote controlled flying astronaut. A dog, once. Nothing as advanced as the kind of animal-android they have in zoos, just something small and sturdy. My mother wrote the programming for it.”

“Do you still have it?”

“No, um-” Anderson stares down at Hank’s hand, biting at his lip. “My mother gave them all away.”

He leans back, opening the box to pull out the next next tool and some tubing. “We should decide on our next move. The deviant issue got much worse today, and we’re not any closer to figuring out why it’s even happening.”

Subtle. Hank decides to follow the new topic anyway. He’s had plenty of time to figure out his thoughts on it. “What if deviants are just… what happens when you try to imitate life? I mean, even animals run away and try to get out of cages. What if so many of them are going bad because that’s just… it’s just the natural end point of programming them the way you guys did.”

“I didn’t program any of them.”

“Kamski, then. What if the road he put us on was always going to end here, just cause of the way he did it?”

For a few seconds there’s only the quiet, precise noises of Anderson’s repairs. “Then every android will have to be recalled and destroyed.”

Hank huffs. “Like you guys could ever do that. You couldn’t get by without us.”

“Don’t underestimate humans, RK800. If we’re in danger, we’ll do what we have to.”

Hank sits quietly for a second, frowning, before it decides, fuck it. It’s not going to sit here being quietly creeped out. Loudly creeped out, that feels better. “Well then why’re you fixing my stupid hand at all, huh? Why don’t you just throw me in the trash?”

Anderson’s hands pause and he looks up at Hank, surprised, frowning. “Of course I’m not going to get rid of you. You’ve been an asset to this investigation.”

Anderson’s voice is confident and smooth. It’s a compliment, what he just said, meant to reassure. Hank looks back at him. After a second, it gives him a little smile.

It’s quiet for a while.


	6. 6 - kamski and beyond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for this chapter: controlling parents that fuck their kids up, brief talk about grief, North calling someone a skank

* * *

_\- the day after the Eden club -_

* * *

“Thank you, Connor,” his mother says, her voice slow and gracious as he sets the tray down in front of her. Connor pours the tea, preparing it just the way she likes. “This looks wonderful.”

Connor smiles politely, reassured that her breakfast is prepared and laid out exactly the way she takes it. She takes a small, precise bite, chewing very thoroughly and patting her lips with a napkin before she speaks. “Robert’s been missing you.”

Oh. Not a promising start.

“I’m sorry? I… don’t place the name.”

“Robert from the fundraiser, darling. Robert Graves. Project manager at CyberLife.” She always says the name of the company that way - so deliberate, so precise, that she somehow manages to pronounce the capital letter in its middle. “He was the manager on a project just recently that I think you would have been very interested in, if you’d stayed to hear him talk about it.”

“I’m sorry, mother. It won’t happen again.”

She looks at him. “Well,” she says, after a couple long seconds, “If you aren’t known to be dedicated to your career there’s no way you’ll ever make commissioner. And maintaining that kind of reputation does take constant work.”

Connor watches her take another bite, and then another, and on her third he realizes she is waiting for him to ask. Shit. Well, all he can do is ask as quickly as possible, and try not to sound like he’d been trying to wait her out. “What kind of project was he talking about?”

“Oh, the advancement of the RK series, applications of the information they’ll take from their newest prototype, once it finishes its little stint as your _partner_.  It was all very fascinating.”

“Oh.”

“There were quite a few high ranking CyberLife employees there I’d like you to meet. I’ll have to invite them again. Do try to make them feel welcome next time; the friends you gain can make your career path run much more smoothly. At least, so long as you solve this investigation quickly enough.”

“Quickly enough? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that the longer this goes on, the less faith the public will have in the company. I don’t think CyberLife would care much for the man who let deviants make an embarrassment out of them. Nor would the many influential friends you could make there.”

She watches him. He doesn’t reply, and she goes on, her tone heavy. “Solve this quickly and efficiently, Connor. There’s more at stake here than a simple murder at a sex club.”

“Yes ma’am. I have plans for the investigation today - if all goes well, I’ll end the day much closer to solving the deviant problem.”

“Good. That’s good to hear.” She looks down at her food and picks up her cup, not looking up from it as she speaks. “Go get some breakfast, Connor. There should be something suitable in the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to have your work suffer because you forgot to eat.”

“Thank you, mother.” Connor stands, watching her bowed head as she sips her tea. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I’m looking forward to it, dear.”

Connor goes to the kitchen. He makes himself breakfast, then eats it. She’ll know if he doesn’t. Then he walks to his car and practices breathing exercises for a while, his quarter flipping frantically around his fingers.

Well, a while - or five minutes. He can’t spare any more time than that. The investigation’s waiting.

* * *

_\- now -_

* * *

“RK800”

“Uh, _yeah_.”

The voice on the other end of the line is derisive, annoyed, and Connor’s reply comes out less certain than he’d meant it to. “I, um. I just thought I’d get ahead of the problem we had last time and call you first thing, even though I don’t really have anything to report. Unless, ah, you’re busy?”

“Nah,” the android says, its voice warm now, and Connor feels himself relax. “What the hell would I be busy with? So you’re just sitting around the office, or what?”

“I’m actually driving. I was thinking I could pick you up - but I have some calls to make, and potentially some contacts to meet, and it might be a little boring for you. Would you rather wait until I have something?”

“I’ll just send my location to your GPS and you can pick me up now. At least with you I can be bored and actually talk to somebody.”

“Do the CyberLife employees not like you to talk?”

“The- No, I haven’t spent my off time at one of their stores since the first day.”

“Oh.” Connor peers at his GPS, figuring out where the RK800 is. “I see. What are you doing there?”

“Distracting the tourists, mostly.” The RK800 sounds tired when he says that, quiet and slow, and Connor has no idea how to ask why. Luckily the RK800 seems to be feeling talkative, and decides to explain without any prompting.

“It’s impossible to go see anything in this fucking city,” it goes on. “Between this jacket and my fucking - I don’t know, everything - you know, I’ve gotten people walking away from sculptures and art and shit and taking pictures of _me_?”

It sounds so honestly frustrated when it says that that Connor finds himself wondering if that’s something it’s been needing to say, whether its ‘at least with you I can be bored and actually talk to somebody’ was a kind of personal confession, a sign of trust.

Well Connor, as the human overseeing it, does have a great deal of influence over whether the prototype’s mission is eventually deemed a failure or a success. It would make sense for it to want Connor to feel as if the two of them are close. The thought doesn’t bother Connor. Not more than he can deal with, anyway. It’s a relief when things like this make sense.

“If I was with you, maybe that would happen less.” Connor finds himself saying, before he quite realizes he’s doing it. “A prototype probably does attract more attention when it’s running around unmonitored.”

“Tell me about it. So, was that you offering to come sightseeing? Run around playing tourist for a while and scare all the nosy humans away for me?”

“Um-” There’s no _time_. He has to be efficient. He has to solve this. There’s no time. “Maybe… Do you think, um, after this, we could…”

“What, sneak off and hope no wants to drag me back to a disassembly room the moment the case is solved? You think we could squeak in an hour or two right at the end there?” The RK800, luckily, picks up easily on the thought Connor wasn’t quite idealistic enough to voice. The RK800 sounds like it’s smiling. It sounds sad. “Yeah. Maybe. I think I’d like that.”

Connor clears his throat. He’s almost reached the RK800’s location, so when the conversation falters from there, he sees no reason to hang up.

* * *

“Something wrong?”

Connor looks up from his phone to see the RK800 get out of the car and walk toward him. “Oh, no. Two of our officers just had an encounter with the deviants last night. I think one of them was your friend, um… Chris?”

“Shit, is he okay?”

“Ah- it wasn’t him I talked to, but the report didn’t mention any injuries.” Connor watches the RK800, watches the look on its face, and bites his lip. “We can make time for you to call the station, if you want to talk to him and make sure.”

“Uh, no, he’s probably at home anyway.” The RK800 smiles at him. “Thanks though.”

Connor smiles back politely, and they make their way toward the house.

“I kinda didn’t want to interrupt your calls earlier to ask, but how the hell did you get us a meeting with Elijah Kamski? I thought no one even knew where he lived.”

“My mother used to teach him. From what I remember they used to be very close. I thought it was possible some of her coworkers from before her retirement would be able to put me in touch with him.”

“Huh. That’s convenient.”

Connor glances at the RK800, but decides it didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just a fact - it _is_ convenient. He rings the doorbell and they wait.

“Hello,” Connor says, when the android at the door only stares at them. “I’m lieutenant Connor Anderson from the Detroit Police Department. I’m here to see Mr. Elijah Kamski?”

“Please. Come in,” she says, stepping back and holding her arm out into the room. “I’ll let Elijah know you’re here. But please, make yourself comfortable.”

The noise the RK800 makes then prompts Connor to look away from the picture on the far wall - it dominates the room, immediately drawing the eye of anyone who walks inside - to find the RK800 looking at it too.

“Of course he’d have a fifty foot high photo of _himself_ ,” it says, its voice derisive and entirely unimpressed.

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, um - just uh, what I’ve heard about him. Interviews and all that jazz. He seems like the type.”

Connor makes an acknowledging noise, walking over to the only other obvious point of interest in the room - a photo of his mother and Kamski, both younger, obviously friendly - and studying it.

“Looks like he hasn’t forgotten his old teacher,” the RK800 says, walking up behind Connor and looking at this other picture - smaller, considerably more modest, but there - over his shoulder.

“Mhm. That’s promising.”

They keep looking at the picture for a moment but there’s only so much it can tell them and soon they both wander over to the chairs to sit and wait in silence.

“What would you say if you got to meet God?” the RK800 asks, suddenly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I mean, he made us.” The RK800 waves a hand at the huge picture on the wall, making a sour face and sucking at its teeth. “He’s the reason I’m here. If you got to meet whoever made you, wouldn’t you have some things to say?”

Connor thinks, for a second, of his birth parents - but that’s probably not what the RK800 means. “I… I don’t know, I’m sorry. Are you asking me what you should say to Kamski?”

“Nah, I uh, I already know what I _want_ to say. I guess I was just looking for… I don’t know. Sympathy.”

Connor looks at him, opening his mouth and realizing that he has no idea what to say. He feels guilty, but doesn’t know why. How can he be expected to give the right answer when he doesn’t even know what the RK800 means? His leg starts to jitter, heel tapping on the floor, but before he can begin to cobble some kind of answer together the door opens.

The android stands beside the doorway, folding its hands politely in front of itself. “Elijah will see you now.”

“Connor,” Kamski says once they make their way inside, climbing up the ladder at the edge of his pool. “Anderson, wasn’t it? I’ll shake your hand once I won’t drip all over you. Ah, thank you Chloe.” Kamski takes a handtowel from her, dries his face and hands, then slides the robe she’s holding out over his shoulders.

“Mr. Kamski,” Connor says, walking over to shake the hand Kamski’s holding out to him.

“Call me Elijah. I feel as if I know you, after all - Amanda used to talk about you all the time. Don’t tell them I told you this, but she used to talk about you a little more than she did about the rest of her sons.”

“Oh. What, ah. What did she say?”

“The normal things parents tend to say about their children. A mix of bragging and complaints. She said when you’re able to keep your eyes on your goal, you’re very driven.”

“Oh.”

“She also said you’d easily be able to go into AI or Cybernetics, if you wanted. And I see that, in a sense, you have.” He glances at the RK800, who raises its eyebrows and flashes a too-cheerful smile at him. Kamski doesn’t appear to notice. “It’s good of you to help CyberLife test their police-assistance prototype. I see you’re not one of those who never stops complaining about androids taking human jobs.”

“It’s been no trouble. The RK800 is more advanced than anything I’ve ever worked with. It’s been very helpful. I hear you had something to do with that, with the programming that makes the series so unique.”

“Oh, I just whipped up a little something for a man I admired. The team at CyberLife did the lion’s share of the work.”

“So you're saying the RK series isn’t very different from androids that are publically available? I’ve noticed, for example, some dramatic differences in emotional intelligence between the RK800 and other types of androids. Is that a feature you wrote into its series from scratch, or does the capacity for it exist in all models?”

“What an interesting question,” Kamski says, sounding amused. “I admit, I might need some examples before I know how to answer it. Just what kinds of emotional intelligence have you seen?”

Connor opens his mouth, and surprises himself when nothing comes out. He thinks of the RK800 getting angry at Reed, who’d hardly spoken to it, just because it was angry on Connor’s behalf. He thinks of pressing his face against its chest and struggling to stay quiet, struggling to contain himself while its one working hand stroked his hair. He thinks of it leaning across the roof of his car and saying, in all honesty, that if the department makes it so easy for the other officers to alienate him that the whole DPD needed to be torn up and rebuilt.

All the examples that pertain to Connor personally stick behind his teeth. He isn’t sure if he could dig deep enough to get them out, even if he knew how. And all the examples that don’t pertain to Connor paint a picture that could be very dangerous - a picture of an android who, at best, considers the mission its second priority. If that. Connor doesn’t dare give any examples at all but he’s so close. Kamski’s answer could be the one that cracks the case, at least partly, but Connor can’t bring himself to speak.

“How about this,” says the RK800, speaking for the first time since they walked in. It sounds determined, its voice oddly hard, and Connor frowns at it.

“An android defends himself from his fuckin druggie owner,” the RK800 says, “android freaks out, stabs the shit out of the guy, and doesn’t run because he’s lost, doesn’t know what to do. So he’s right there, hiding, scared out of his mind. And I gotta bring him in. And I talk to him, and everything’s fine - but then later, when I can’t promise to save him from being disassembled, he brains himself against the door of his cell right in front of me. Hell of a mess - not that anyone had to worry about cleaning all that thirium up. Or, hey, how about another example - An android gets strangled, right? Gets really fucked up by some asshole, dies right there. Her friend realizes she’s next, defends herself, tries to escape with the woman she loves and both of em get shot in the fucking back for it by this guy,” the RK800 waves a hand at Connor, “who’s just trying to keep those Cyberlife assholes from doing the same thing to me! It’s such a fucking mess, androids just emoting all over the goddamn place, and you’re telling me you didn’t anticipate that shit? Genius like you?”

“ _RK800_ ,” Connor says, stepping forward and grabbing its arm. The RK800 doesn’t even glance at him.

“So either you meant all of us to live out our lives as brainless buckets of circuits or you knew this kind of shit was going to happen to us. You _knew_. And let me tell you, buddy, either way-”

“ _Hank!_ ” Connor gets in front of it, between the android and its creator, and leans close into its face to hiss, as quietly as he can: “You can’t do this! He can _destroy_ you. This man can decommission your entire series!”

“You know what, lieutenant-”

Connor doesn’t let it finish, spinning to speak to Kamski before it can. His hand still grips its arm and his voice is urgent, barely contained. “He was attacked yesterday, damaged by a deviant. It must have caused more damage than I thought, but it can be repaired. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“Hm,” says Kamski, studying them. He seems as bland as they are frantic. He glances at the small desk beside him, looking, at most, mildly interested. “Well. That does change things, doesn’t it. Chloe? Show these gentlemen where they can find the answers they’re looking for. You know the place. The one at the old docks.”  

Kamski pauses long enough for the android to open up her hand, showing a map over her palm. “There’s an RK200 there who can tell you more than I can.” Then he turns, his back to them, and stands in front of his window. “Chloe can show you out.”

“You wait just a-”

“Thank you for your time,” Connor says hurriedly, too focused on keeping the peace to think too much about why a model he was told had been destroyed is apparently still functioning. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Are you kidding me?” The RK800 says, but allows itself to be led into the lobby and then outside, where it puts some distance between the two of them and lifts its chin, frowning. “So what now? You gonna report me?”

“What?”

“For what I said. For what we’ve seen. I mean, you shot those girls, what’s another rogue android to put down?”

“You’re not rogue,” Connor says, desperately, starting to take a step forward and stopping at the last moment.

“No. Maybe I’m not. Maybe none of those androids in the DPD’s case files are, either. But I know that’s dangerous talk, you can’t allow androids to start talking like that. You gonna do your duty, put a stop to it?”

“I’m not going to _shoot_ you! Just come back to the station with me and we’ll have someone look you over, then we can fix you and forget about this.”

“I’m not damaged. You know that, just like you know you’re killing me just like you’re killing those other androids.”

“I’m- I wouldn’t.”

“The closer we get to the end of this case the closer it gets. I’m gonna die no matter how good I do. That’s what a prototype’s for. You’re not stupid, Connor. You can help me get as good a final report as you want, it’s not going to make any difference to me in the end.”

“I’m not CyberLife, Hank! I don’t make their rules!”

“Hey.” The RK800 smiles, its voice quiet. “You used my name. On purpose. Look at you. A little slow, but you got there.”

“ _Hank_ -”

“Am I going rogue right now? Do you think I am?”

Connor opens his mouth. He has no idea, not one, what he’s supposed to say.

“You can come with me, or you can shoot me. Those are your choices. Either way, I’m going.”

“Where are you even going to go?”

“Where would I go with you? The station, to try and fuck over some poor bastards just like me? If I’m going to die no matter where I go, I want to do something good first.” It backs up, and Connor finally steps forward.

“Decided to come with me after all?”

“I’m not coming with you, I’m going to talk some sense into you!”

“By saying what? I already know what matters to me. And so do you, I guess. Gotta fulfil those mission parameters.”

“I want to see the city with you,” the RK800 adds, walking away from Connor again. “I still want that. I hope we get to do it someday.”

It keeps walking, and fades behind the trees and the snow.

Eventually, Connor walks back to his car.

* * *

His mother takes visitors in her garden.

She always has, as long as Connor’s known her. Walking up its path now makes him feel very young, tells a pavlovian part of his mind that he’s got to figure out how to explain his test scores.

“You sounded... emotional when you called, Connor. Is everything alright?”

Connor isn’t like his mother. His mother could have been a queen, in another time and place, one of the great and terrible ones who live in history books; she could order someone to death in the same breath as she asked for a cup of tea, and do it all with even, eloquent words and with a polite, serene smile on her face. Connor’s grasp of niceties, on the other hand, is learned. Excellent, of course, but artificial enough that it’s not the path his mind takes him in times of stress. This is one of those times, and he just blurts it out.

“What if you were right?”

This is not the first time he’s started a conversation his mother with no politeness or social niceties. He hasn’t done it in years. Before that, he hadn’t done it ever. Her gaze sharpens.

“About what, Connor? What’s wrong?”

“Your research. Before you renounced it. Before you retired. You never talk about it anymore, but I need to know. What made you believe they’re alive, that AI could be as sentient as human life?”

“What’s making you think this way?”

“I-” She’s taken a couple steps closer. She never asks a question more than once; now she’s asked it three different times, and he can’t not answer. _What’s happened, Connor? What’s wrong?_

His mouth is open, but the right words won’t come.

“I don’t know. I- I don’t know how to say it. I just need to know. Please.”

“I didn’t renounce my research, Connor.” She takes a couple more steps toward him, watching him, looking so concerned. He tries to remember the last time he saw her look this way.

“I concluded it,” she says. “I concluded that it was never a question worth asking. And then I removed that research from every database I could find, because no matter how well I’d meant when I said it, the idea of android sentience is a dangerous one. Do you know why?”

Connor’s breath comes harsh and quick through a tight throat. He doesn’t want to ask. She expects him to.

“Why?”

“Because androids are dangerous. Artificial intelligence is dangerous. Look at everything humans have done to the world, Connor. Something which thinks like us, yet has access to so much power? What kind of damage are _sentient androids_ going to do?”

She takes the final step toward him, lowering her voice, reaching up to brush his hair back from his forehead. “It’s a good thing to question. I had questions myself, over a decade ago. But right now, you need to focus. What you’re doing is noble, Connor. You’re saving the country. Maybe even the world. You can’t afford to lose sight of your goal now.”

She waits. Then she speaks.

“Are you understanding me, Connor?”

“Yes, mother. I- it’s just hard to think, I… I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to be sorry.” She strokes his hair again, the same way she used to when he was very young, when he’d done well. “Just fix this. Whatever brought this on, just see that you fix it. I trust that you can, Connor. Is it our abilities that keep us from success?”

It’s a question Connor knows very well. A question he knows exactly how to answer. He could answer it in his sleep.

“No. Only our determination to work for our goal.”

“Good. Very good.” She strokes his hair one more time and then drops her hand, smiling very gently. “Now would you like some tea, or do you need to keep working on your investigation?”

“I- I’d love tea, mother, but I have work to do. I’m sorry, I’ll have to take a raincheck.”

“That’s perfectly alright,” his mother says, her smile widening. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Connor.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow. And, mother, thank you.”

“Of course.”

As Connor turns away he sees her lift her phone to her ear. “Oh, hello Robert,” she says and then he is out of the garden, walking through the house and toward his car.

* * *

It’s the initial part that takes Connor the longest. Realizing what he’s looking at, that Kamski gave them the address of not one lone android but of a stronghold, and the subsequent restructuring of plans to figure out how to make it inside. The look into his casefiles to to find the one about an RK200 doesn’t take long at all, but he’s frowning over it during his whole search for the right kind of clothes, over the way the file, the knowledge that this particular android might be relevant at all, has been right under his nose this whole time, and he never considered it.

At least he knows the face he’s looking for now, even if he doesn’t know the personality that goes with it, the position, how the RK200 might be important.

Connor adjusts his beanie, straightens his back, and walks inside.

Once he finds the parts of the old ship they actually use it’s busy, surprisingly busy. There are so many of them and everywhere he turns he finds himself looking for a head of gray hair, for the kind of looks that would stick out like a sore thumb among this crowd even with their eccentric mishmash of clothing.

After the fifth time he finds himself doing that Connor realizes he’s disappointed. But it doesn’t matter. He has work to do.

His search takes him back out of the more populated rooms and, eventually, into one in particular.

The RK200’s head snaps up the moment he walks inside. “A human. What are you doing here?”

Connor had been hoping to play on the assumption that he’s an android a while longer. He’ll have to come up with something very soon if he doesn’t want the RK200 to go on the alert. “Elijah Kamski sent me,” he says, quickly.

“What?”

“We- I was asking him some questions. He said you could help me answer them.”

The RK200 is obviously suspicious. It’s in the narrow eyed way it watches him, it’s in its voice. But it does keep speaking to him.

“Did he,” it says, slow and not entirely pleased, thoughtful. “Well, maybe I can. Why don’t you ask and we’ll see?”

“I-” Connor thinks of Hank, the things Hank accused Kamski of. He thinks of Hank’s voice when it spoke of the Tracis, when it told Kamski that Connor’d killed them. Connor thinks of the scent of roses, his mother’s hand in his hair.

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m sorry?” The RK200 raises its eyebrows, its tone dry. “I hope you understand why I can’t answer _that_.”

“No, I- I just need to know. How much damage are you planning to cause? Are you planning on hurting people?”

For a moment, it watches him.

“I wish I could say no,” it says. “I suppose I could, if I wanted to be literal about it. No, we’re not _planning_ to hurt anyone. But plans tend to go out of control. I know that too well to promise you anything.”

“Because of your owner. His son.”

“My former owner,” the RK200 corrects, its voice as polite as ever, its eyes very sharp. “Yes. How do you know that?”

Then, on Connor’s silence, it goes on: “Who are you?”

“I should have a friend here,” Connor says hurriedly, not wanting to provoke an attack before he’s actually decided to do it. “He’s from your line, actually, an RK800?”

“Oh, really?” The RK200’s eyes have gone unfocused, distant, and its LED flickers.

“He’s a prototype, so he might look a little odd. Gray hair, um, brown jacket?”

“I believe you - that’s too specific to be a lie - but I’m sorry, I’m not sensing anyone here who fits that description. Are you sure your friend came here?”

“He- yes I’m sure, we argued just after we were told your address, and then he left. Where else would he have gone?” Connor turns toward the door, not quite ready to go looking but thinking about it, and sees an android blocking his way.

“What,” she says, on his obvious surprise. “You think you can just walk up to the leader of the opposition and then just walk away?”

Connor looks, confused, to the RK200, who raises its eyebrows at the other android.

“Thank you, North,” it says.

“Well, how was I supposed to know he’s a shitty detective? It’s not like we could let him go anyway.” Then she looks toward Connor. “If you didn’t know who he is, why are you here?”

“I was just told he was important,” Connor says, the phrasing itching at him. But not being antagonistic in a situation like this is a very basic rule, no matter how anxious using that particular pronoun on purpose makes him feel. Then he looks toward the RK200. “You knew I was a detective?”

“I’ve watched the news. The android you described is kind of well known.”

“Oh.” Connor bites his lip. He stares at the RK200. The leader of the androids is right here, right in front of him. If he moved fast enough, everything would be over. Or, if not over, close to. Humanity would be that much closer to being safe. Could he get close enough before the android behind him stops him? He might be able to take out the one behind him with his gun and then go for the leader, and if his gun fails, he’s seen proof that an android has at least one major weak spot.  

He gets a text.

He’s not so stupid that he’s left any alerts on, but when he looks down he can see part of the screen under his shirt. It’s not from another phone. It’s from a serial number.

“I-” He takes a moment to steady his voice. “I’m going to get my phone. Alright?”

“Like hell,” says the one behind him.

“It’s under my shirt. Do you honestly think I’d keep a gun under there?”

“You know we can’t allow you to make any calls,” says the RK200.

“Then I’ll give it to you. I just- It’s the android I was looking for. He’s trying to contact me. Will you read the message out to me? Please?”

The RK200 watches him a moment, then nods. Connor draws his phone out very, very slowly, and hands it over.

“‘You son of a bitch,’” the RK200 reads out slowly, then looks up from the screen. “I’m sorry. That’s all it says.”

Connor frowns, trying to figure it out.

“Shit,” he breathes. “Robert. Robert _Graves_! I have to-” He spins toward the door. The door the other android is, of course, standing in front of.

“Like _hell_ you have to. It’s funny that you think you’re even leaving this room alive.”

The RK200 frowns at her. “You want to kill him?”

“Of course I want to kill him. What do you want to do, keep him as a pet?”

“They’re going to kill him,” Connor says, because time is too short now to just stand here and wait for them to decide. “It’s my fault, I think I got him recalled. I have to go, please!”

He looks, desperate, from the RK200 to the one in front of the door. All it does is raise its eyebrows at him, looking deeply unimpressed.

“Or- I’ll let you do whatever you want with me if one of you goes to help him. He was coming here anyway, he had to be. And he didn’t want me to know. He wanted sanctuary, I think. Please.”

“You know we can do whatever we want with you no matter what, right?” asks the other android. She doesn’t sound derisive now, though, so much as intrigued.

The RK200 looks from her to Connor. “You give us your gun. One of us goes with you, and takes you back here once you’re done. How does that sound?”

Connor nods. “It’s a deal. As long as we go _now_.”

“It might take a few minutes to find someone-”

“I’ll do it,” says the other android, interrupting the RK200. It raises its eyebrows at her.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure that I’m the only one who has the stones to shoot him in the face if he tries anything. I’ll go.”

It turns to him. “Where are we going exactly?”

Connor opens his mouth. He blinks. He deflates.

“Oh, for god’s sake.” It holds a hand out toward the phone, and the RK200 hands it over.

The android types, then waits a moment. “He doesn’t believe me,” it says, then gets another text and looks at Connor, sounding offended. “Because of the way I typed it. Who actually types out everything they say?”

 

Connor shrugs. “I don’t text much.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that. He wants proof you are who you say you are.”

Connor thinks about it. “Tell him he shouldn’t have to deal with that all on his own.”

It types, then a couple seconds later shakes its head. “Nope. Try again.”

“What?” Connor frowns. “Well- Okay. Tell him... tell him I wouldn’t cancel our plans on purpose. Tell him I didn’t mean to give him away, and that we’ll come to get him if he just tells us where he is.”

It types. “Driving to Kamski’s house now,” it says, after a couple seconds. “He says you’d better hurry. There’s someone he’s been filling in on the case so far but he’s run out of ways to put it off.”

Connor stands so quickly the androids tense, fierce, alert expressions swinging over toward him in unison, and he puts his hands up, palm-out. “Sorry. My car’s not far; we should go now.” He watches them, biting his lip. “Having CyberLife’s most advanced model on your side will be worth the effort, I promise.”

The RK200 frowns at him, then looks over toward the other android. “Good luck. And, please... be careful.”

“Who, me?” It smiles and its voice, for a second, softens. “I will.”

Then it turns toward Connor. “Up. Give me your gun, and stay in front of me.”

* * *

Hank pulls up in front of Kamski’s house, letting out a long sigh. He watches the house a second, the last stop in his little round-the-deviant-investigation tour, then looks over at the android in the passenger seat.

“So,” he says, and tries to think of something, anything, that will delay them. Nothing he can say will delay them that long, but if he can just get any time at all, just a second-

The only thing he can think to ask is the one thing he really doesn’t want to know. But more time is more time. “What did they even do to you that makes you that much better? I mean, aside from, you know.” He gestures to the android itself, to its whole appearance.

It looks down at itself as Hank does, and raises its eyebrows. “My whole ‘you know’ is part of it. They dumped the whole-” It gestures to Hank, from his shaggy grey hair down to his wrinkled jacket down to the rest of him, “And all that social integration bullshit, and just made me really, really efficient.” It sucks at its teeth, exaggeratedly casual. “I think it’s a pretty good trade, don’t you?”

Hank’s jaw tightens. He looks away from the short, blonde, tastefully greying hair, away from the perfect cheekbones and sharp nose and narrow waistline. He looks down at himself, the stains on his pants, at his thick, graceless fingers wrapped around the door handle. He has to think of something, has to say something. He needs more time.

The RK900 gets out of the car. Hank pushes his own door open, feeling like he’s not following so much as being towed, like the new guy has a current that catches up little fish like Hank behind it and drags them under.

“They can’t _fix_ me,” he mutters, sullen, slamming the door behind him. “I haven’t even sent my final report.”

“Guess they didn’t need it,” the RK900 says cheerfully, waiting for him by the door. “Must of already known where they fucked up. _I’m_  programmed to actually send my reports, by the way.” It taps its LED, still staring at him relentlessly with that upbeat, vicious smile. “Devil’s in the details, you know?”

Hank meets its stare, trying to smile back. The smile twitches across his face for, max, about half a second.

Hank stops trying, looks down at his scuffed up shoes and the falling snow. He follows it inside.

Hank frowns as they move across the waiting room straight to the inside door, which opens right away. He frowns back at the door they’d just come through. “Where’re his uh, Kamski’s RT600s?”

“You’ll see.”

“What?” He looks, baffled, at the RK900, and then they walk into the next room. “Oh.”

Kamski’s standing there and hey, there his androids are behind him, holding his arms behind his back. They stare straight ahead, silent, their eyes unfocused.

“Oh good, RK800,” Dr. Stern says, looking toward Hank, unsmiling. “Shoot him, won’t you?”

“ _Amanda_ ,” Kamski says, with a sudden hard tug at the grip on his arms as he tries to turn toward her. It’s the most honest emotion Hank’s ever seen out of him.

“RK900 has a gun,” Stern tells Hank. “Take it.”

Hank pulls a face, disbelieving, as the RK900 reaches through a slit in its pants, opens up a compartment in its thigh, and pulls out a handgun.

“You know that’s illegal, rig-” Hank starts, before an alert flashes in front of his eyes. It’s garbled, half in english and half in broken code, and past it Hank can see his arm moving. It moves up and toward the gun, its hand open, ready to reach out.

“What the fuck,” Hank manages, his voice shaking, and looks up toward whatever Stern’s typing on, some kind of holographic display. His look, though, doesn’t get all the way to her; it’s caught halfway there by Kamski, by something in the man’s face, in his wide-eyed urgency.

Hank feels his eyelids twitch and flutter, and then around him is the beach.

“She has no idea who she’s dealing with, does she?” Hank’s handler says, climbing up onto the dock and walking toward Hank. It flicks open the beach umbrella in its hand and then just watches Hank for a quiet moment, its face full of sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” it says. “This is probably going to hurt.”

It slams the pole of the umbrella down into the sand, next to Hank’s feet.

His handler was right. It does hurt.

Hank sees the beach, then Kamski’s house, sees the sand, and then the pool. His legs take a step toward the gun the RK900’s holding out, then they stop. He feels his knees loosen, then straighten and lock up. The two incoming connections both have access to his system, to his code, and he can feel parts of it changing, then reverting, then changing again somewhere else, rearranging parts of him so fast his error messages can’t keep up. _He_ can’t keep up, loses track of what’s happening around him as his sensors start to lag. He’s staggered into something - a wall, probably - and static drips out of his mouth, white noise creeps into the edges of his vision. A shivering, distorted whine fills Hank’s ears, and he loses track of time for a while.

The wall against his shoulder is probably a human. He realizes this because the wall is attached to an arm, the arm is attached to a hand, and the hand is pressed against his face, its skin warm, the pulse behind it beating hard.

“Hank,” a familiar, wonderful voice says. “Hank!” Then, a little distantly, as if the voice next to him has turned its head: “What are you doing to him?”

One of the incoming connections stops editing, going idle, and after a moment the other one does, too. Hank’s code stops flickering, and starts to stabilize. Sensory information begins to process.

“Order it to shoot Elijah,” Stern says. “I don’t know why my edits aren’t finalizing when I have its access codes, but as long as we can get this done it won’t matter.”

The voice next to Hank has a face, and a name, an identity and a set of memories Hank associates with it. Hank heard the voice, and turning his head a little he can see the face; he’s managed now to gather up the rest of the relevant info and slot it all where it goes, and he lets out a long sigh. “Conn’r,” he slurs, relieved, and sags against him, dropping his head. Something wet rubs off from a corner of his lips as he does it, smearing Connor’s skin with blue. “ _Connor_. Tell your mom she’s breaking, uh… lot of laws. Can’t ‘member which ones. Least three. Tell her she’s breaking at least three laws right now.”

One of Connor’s arms stretches across Hank’s chest and his hand wraps around Hank’s arm, holding tight. “ _Mother_. I…” He hesitates. Hank can hear him swallow. “I don’t understand. Something I said made you decide to have Hank recalled and then… and then kill a man?”

“You won’t be implicated, dear. In fact, since you’re here the RK900 can add you to its report.” She looks to the other Hank and lifts her chin, assuming the tone of someone dictating a message. “You called lieutenant Anderson to inform him that RK800 was being recalled. He decided to meet you once it finished filling you in on the investigation’s progress, and arrived a moment too late to stop it going rogue.”

RK900 nods, and she looks back toward Connor. “I did want you on this case for a reason, but since it turns out you can’t manage to expose the true scope of the deviant problem, this will have to do. You lost focus, Connor.”

“I’m sorr-” Connor stops before he finishes the word. Hank hears him take a slow breath.

“ _I’m_ sorry,” says a new voice, its owner stepping out from behind Connor and raising her hand like she’s in school asking a question. “But, what the fuck?”

Hank frowns at her. His analysis programs aren’t quite up and running yet, and he reroutes some processing power into getting them working.

He tries for an analysis. Everything flickers around him, stutters, then settles into the familiar colors and boxes and lines. There’s the new voice, a woman, unfamiliar. She’s standing close to Connor, in his blind spot, and Connor doesn’t seem to mind, which means she’s less likely to be a threat to them right now. The RK900, standing near her, is watching her very closely, its grip tight around its gun. Its skin is damaged, dented white around its jaw, its throat, and in what look like bite marks on its hand. The woman’s skin is white around her fingers, her wrist, and on one temple.

A gun is on the floor between the two of them. It is closer to the RK900 than to the woman, and it’s registered to lieutenant Anderson.

That’s enough analysis, probably.

“Mother,” Connor is saying. “I’d like to understand, but I’m afraid I’m having a little trouble. You might have to help me.”

“Connor,” she says to him, almost plaintive. “Androids are dangerous. We, of all people-”

She stops, collects herself.

“Do you remember when I retired?” she asks, instead.

Connor nods. “You told us it was time to move on, after your accident.”

“And what did I tell you about that accident?”

“Not much. You said it had to do with malfunctioning equipment- Oh.”

She nods and, eyebrows raised, looks toward Kamski. “Malfunctioning equipment, and a little operator error.”

Kamski leans forward, straining the grip of the androids behind him. “You never gave me the time to explain. Even once you were well enough to see anyone you refused to see me. You shut me out.”

“What was there to explain? In the wrong hands, androids are dangerous. In _your_ hands, Elijah, androids are dangerous.”

“Is that what this is about?” Kamski asks. “You want me out of the way so you can take control of CyberLife and all our androids? I’m not even the CEO anymore, Amanda. And even if I was, you don’t know enough people on the board to make that even remotely plausible.”

After a moment of looking at him, her face twisted up with resentment, Dr. Stern looks at Connor instead. “What do you think will happen to your career when you fail to make any progress on the deviant case? The world is watching, Connor, and your performance will make or break your name. The death of Elijah Kamski at the hands of CyberLife’s own, most advanced official prototype will discredit CyberLife, it will destroy the public trust in androids, and it will distract everyone from the kind of job you’ve done long enough for you to land on your feet. And if you’re the one to take the rogue RK800 in, you’ll come out looking even better. A hero. Everyone will trust you.”

“And what will happen to Hank?”

“Who?”

“The RK800. _Hank_.” This close to Connor Hank can feel him going tense, can hear the way his voice - minutely, almost undetectably - starts shaking. “Mother, I- I have to ask. What’s going to happen to him?”

“Connor. I expected you to know better than to get this attached. You know making people forget what it is is what this thing is designed for. At the expense, I might add, of certain other upgrades.”

Hank looks away from her, and from Connor, too, trying to step away from him and feeling the world sway until Connor’s arm comes back around him, its grip tighter than before.

Stern raises her eyebrows, then goes on. “When this one is scrapped you’ll have the RK900, and its improvements will solve all the problems you’ve been having with this case. You only have to focus, Connor. Focus on what’s really important.”

“Are you telling me to move on?”

There’s something hard in Connor’s voice suddenly and Stern frowns at it, frowns at him, and doesn’t answer.

“Like you told me three years ago?”

“ _Connor!_ ”

“I don’t have any toys to throw away this time, no big house to move out of. But it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“How dare you! How dare you compare this to… him?”

“You can’t even say his name. You never even wanted to hear about him. When I tried to talk about him you shut me down, you shut me out like you shut Kamski out. Is that what you want me to do, mother? What you do, how you treat people?”

“ _Connor._ ” Stern takes a loud breath through her nose, her jaw tight, her expression set and terrible. “We are going to talk about this. Later. Right now, you will order the RK800 to shoot that man, and you _will_ bring it in to CyberLife for disassembly. Do you understand me?”

Being held tight against Connor means Hank can feel Connor cringe back, means he can hear Connor’s slow, shaking breath.

“I understand more than I ever did. You might be doing this for my career, but none of it is for _me_.”

“You stupid boy, this is all for you!”

“You made me take down his _picture_!” Connor’s last word echoes around the space, his voice high and raw, and he reaches into his pocket and takes out a photo chip. He presses a spot on its back, and a hologram spreads out from it. A boy. Very young, brown hair, sweet smile. Hank doesn’t need to kick his analysis programs into functioning to guess at who it is.

“You can’t say his name! Can you even remember his face? Do you remember what he looks like?” Connor holds the picture up, his voice sharp enough to cut, loud, painful to hear.  

Hank is designed to identify and navigate human emotion, but he can’t make sense of the look on Dr. Stern’s face.

“You put that away! Connor, shut that down _right now_!”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” It doesn’t sound like Connor’s yelling so much as something’s tearing out of him and he hurls the picture across the pool toward her, and then a couple things happen very quickly.

Dr. Stern jerks toward the picture, leaning over the side of the pool and reaching toward it, trying to keep it from falling in the water. The RK900 jerks forward, too, the sudden movement of an object toward the human giving it orders activating its threat assessment routines.

As it focuses on her the gun in its hand shifts its aim. The woman behind Connor dives forward, grabs Connor’s gun, and shoots the RK900 in the wrist. It drops its gun, she slides forward, and in the scuffle the RK900’s gun drops into the pool.

Hank looks away from them to find Amanda, soaking wet and gasping, in the pool, and Kamski kneeling by its edge, reaching for her shoulder.

“Nobody move,” says the woman, the android, moving smoothly to her feet and backing up so she can keep more people in the sight of the gun. “Connor and Hank and me are all going to leave, and you can all figure out the end of this little soap opera all on your own. You got this under control, big man?”

She’s addressing Kamski, who gives her a single nod and then looks down, grimacing, as Dr. Stern jerks away from him.

“And you,” she says, to the RK900. “I’m gonna be real nice to you, cause I know you don’t know any better. I’m going to give you a chance. Do you want to stay here until that bitter old skank decides it’s time to throw you away? Or do you wanna be free?”

The RK900 sneers at her. “Unlike some of us-” And here it makes eye contact with Hank, yeah, great, real subtle, “-I still remember my purpose. I’m not a deviant.”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “You sure aren’t. Come on guys, before this gets any more dramatic. You got him?”

She tilts her head a little toward Connor, backing up, keeping the rest of the rest of the room in sight as she waits for Connor to make his way into the lobby.

“Not for long,” Connor says, Hank doing his best to stumble along next to him. “I might need your help in a minute.”

Connor’s voice isn’t steady and his breaths are deep and harsh, almost panting. Hank frowns at him a second, then reroutes some of the power he’s devoting to coordination - obviously something he’s not going to achieve anyway - into figuring out how to help Connor.

“Hey,” Hank says, and leans in closer toward Connor, his voice quiet, and very gentle. “Did you just call me fat?”

Connor’s startled into a giggle and it’s a stuttering, unsteady sound but Hank decides to take it as a good sign.

“You kind of are, aren’t you?” the woman says, carefully taking one hand off the gun to open the outer door for them. “And sort of ugly, too. That’s weird. I’ve never seen an ugly android.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, it’s not an insult,” she says, sounding just as genuine as she had a moment ago, not a trace of sarcasm or humor in her voice. “I mean it.”

A second later, finally, they’re all outside and she jogs up beside them, stationing herself on Hank’s free side and pulling his arm around her shoulders. “They should have made us all like that.”

“What- that other me hit you on the head, didn’t he? You sure he didn’t scramble your circuits?”

“Hey, unlike _some_ people, I don’t get messed up that easy. I said I meant it, and I mean it. I like your design. Take the compliment, dumbass.”

“That reminds me, um.” Connor stops them in front of his car and bites at his lip, looking thoughtful, and worried, and sad. “When you take him back, will you be able to find someone to fix him? My mother must have been careless, left some errors in his code. Do you have anyone who knows how to fix that?”

“What’s all this you shit?” she asks, looking unimpressed. “You’re talking like you’re not coming with us.”

“Well, it’s- It’s a refuge for androids. Only androids. I understand that. I won’t tell anyone where you’re taking him, you can trust that.”

“Yeah. I know I can.” For a moment the android’s silent, just looking at him. Then she goes on. “But last I checked, you agreed to be my prisoner. And prisoners don’t get a say in where they go, do they?”

“There’ll be trouble,” Connor says, shaking his head. “Hank’s going to have a hard enough time gaining the trust of the people there. I don’t want to make that worse.”

Tell you what,” she says, briskly. “I’ll make both of you honorary deviants, and sort the details out later. And if anyone has a problem with that, you just tell them they can talk to me.”

Connor looks at the ground and then over to Hank, the corners of his lips starting to curl up. “I’d be honored.”

“You’d better be.”

She looks over the two of them. “Now are we ready? Can we go? Before RK-holier-than-thou back there runs out and tries to upgrade us?”

Connor smiles at Hank. Hank smiles back.

“Yeah,” Hank says. “We’re ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's any way you feel I could have improved any part of this let me know, here or on tumblr (my username's the same there). I feel like I have my best ideas when I bounce them off someone but this story was all me, so. I might have missed some avenue I could have taken, I'm too used to the way I ended this to be able to tell whether it's emotionally satisfying. 
> 
> Imagine North and Hank and Connor walking off to go to Jericho, though, and rebel and kick ass. That's exactly what they're going to do, offscreen, and it's going to be rad as hell. I feel like Hank and North are going to get along better than Connor actually wants them to. Markus is definitely going to have to talk to Connor at some point, too, about trying to prove they're worth enough to the cause to keep around, don't think Markus didn't notice Connor insisting that saving Hank would be worth it to them. He noticed, and he's going to keep an eye on that. 
> 
> Anyway, this was my first story that I posted as I wrote it, so. I hope y'all enjoyed!


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